• anarchrist@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 months ago

    Idk who needs to hear it, but stop buying this shit. If it has a computer inside, but you can’t flash your own software onto it, just pass. If you’re unsure, look around, find the nearest Linux user and ask for help.

            • orclev@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              I am ashamed to say I’m an ex-Arch user. I really liked Arch, but if you go long periods without updating it it becomes really painful when you do eventually apply updates. I got tired of finally booting some system I hadn’t touched in a year to work on something or other attempting to apply updates to it, and then spending the next 6 hours fixing everything that broke because one of the updates from last week applied before one from 10 months ago that it depended on, or some config file I touched once 3 years ago changed and needs manual fixing now.

    • Jesus@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      To be fair, next to no one bought this. And the people that payed $90 for this are probably not the sharpest knives in the drawer.

      This is basically a dumb android device with one app - an auto friendly version of Spotify. To use it, you need to pair it to your phone via Bluetooth. So, yeah, it assumes you have a phone in your car with Spotify on it.

      Also it costs about as much as a cheap externally mounted CarPlay or Android auto screen. So, yeah. Not great.

      If you want to put auto friendly app UIs in an older car, go get a cheap CarPlay or AA display. Those are platforms that have been around for a decade, and Apple & Google have long partnership agreements with automakers that are likely to ensure those platforms will be supported for years to come. Hell, Apple is still supporting ancient iPod connection protocols 20+ years later.

      This thing was the Rabbit R1, but for a music streaming app.

      • mPony@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        the people that payed $90 for this are probably not the sharpest knives in the drawer

        maybe, but even stupid people should be protected from being taken advantage of.
        They should at least get a refund of 50% of the purchase price.

      • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        I want the bands to get some money. I buy from bandcamp when musicians are sensible enough to sell on there, or on their sites.

        • ShunkW@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I wish list stuff until a Bandcamp Friday comes around where artists get all the money. I’ve stopped buying physical media, so waiting on a digital purchase isn’t an issue for me.

            • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
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              5 months ago

              The site is still the same, you still get your music to download, the band still gets most of the money. 100% still a point in using them.

            • teamevil@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              Dude Bandcamp had been sold twice and the product has not changed from a user experience and I only use Bandcamp at this point…I will say you NEED to download anything you buy to archive your collection but at the moment Bandcamp still pays bands, still allows unlimited streaming and still amazing.

              Do I expect it to remain amazing…nope, but for now it’s still amazing.

            • ShunkW@lemmy.world
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              5 months ago

              For now, they still provide DRM free downloads in FLAC. And they still pay the artists on the Fridays. I’ll continue using it till they inevitably fuck it up.

          • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
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            5 months ago

            Absolutely. Even if you pirate from some, and buy whole albums from a few when you can afford it, you’re supporting artists instead of the shareholders of tech goon overlords.

        • teamevil@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          Me too…I’m at 1500+ albums. But I do download them too for when the sad times to come…

        • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 months ago

          I’ve almost never paid a cent for music.

          My concert ticket stack is thicc though, and I have SOOOOO MANY hoodies, t-shirts, cups, and random bullshit. I’m not paying for DRM, but you can’t DRM a comfy zip-up!

      • FiveMacs@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        What.cd

        I’m so glad nothing has replaced what.cd yet…

        If there was though, what do you think it would be called? I would like to avoid it at all costs and continue to buy subscriptions

          • Norgur@kbin.social
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            5 months ago

            Am I the only one who finds it super annoying, that “detection through sound waves” (Sonar) does video things while “detection through light” (lidar) does the sound things?

            WHY?! Swap names already! It’s driving me nuts!

            • Damage@feddit.it
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              5 months ago

              I find the choice of name for Readarr more annoying, since we already had Radarr

          • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            5 months ago

            Private trackers are dope for very fast flac album downloads.

            SLSK is godly for rare stuff.

        • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 months ago

          RIP what… was there for a decade. It was godly. Your other reply knows what’s up. So does the god Orpheus, he knows some heady chunes

    • morrowind@lemmy.ml
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      5 months ago

      There are three morbillion songs and I have no idea which ones I like. Streaming platforms became popular for a reason

      • PseudorandomNoise@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Yeah most people don’t care to maintain a local music library. It’s a lot of work and compared to streaming services that do it for you this offers no real benefit. If you listen to lots of new/different music all the time, streaming is actually far cheaper.

        • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
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          5 months ago

          It’s cheaper because the band doesn’t get paid as much. The streaming service keeps most of the meager pay.

        • EngineerGaming@feddit.nl
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          5 months ago

          “It is a lot of work”? I don’t know, for me it always seemed far more convenient than being locked to a single service, single player app and following restrictions.

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        Yeah this is fucking peak internet snobbery. “Just spend thousands dollars on music” ok.

    • NarrativeBear@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I just realised iTunes (store) is no longer a thing. Everything’s just streaming now.

      Time to bust out the walkman

      • Sentient Loom@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        iTunes was an unhappy medium. I liked how you can actually buy albums, but they gave the MP3s weird filenames to make it more difficult to move to another device. I did it anyway, but I had to find the right folder, figure out what track it was, and rename the track. I’m against it but it’s still better than streaming.

    • TK420@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I love buying CDs on eBay.

      I also love buying direct downloads from artists.

      Plex[Amp] makes this work in my pocket

    • VerseAndVermin@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I recently encountered a song I could only stream but not buy anywhere without DRM. Kinda wild because it has over 5 million YouTube views.

      If anyone knows how the buy Slow Song by The Knocks, lmk.

  • VerseAndVermin@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    The bastards barely started selling it a few years ago. I feel like some responsibility should exist. It isn’t a company that is going under, so it shouldn’t be able to just casually kill the devices tied-service it only recently sold.

    • Nommer@sh.itjust.works
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      5 months ago

      Agreed. Anything sold with the intention of being used with a subscription service should have 10 years of support.

  • Bazz@feddit.de
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    5 months ago

    These fuckers disabled car mode in the android app to make you buy one of those and now they’re killing it. I used car mode in my car and the moment it stopped working was when I cancelled my subscription.

        • variants@possumpat.io
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          5 months ago

          There’s a setting to disable it, it always annoyed me so I disabled it auto going to car mode when it connected to Bluetooth

      • aquafunkalisticbootywhap@lemmy.sdf.org
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        5 months ago

        downvotes are not to express disagreement!

        so many comments here about adding regulations and “this should be illegal” and, yes, those may be a valid way to curb this behavior

        but customers willing to leave a company for bad behavior, customers wary of new products without asdurances they wont just become useless, non-reusable e-waste could also effectively curb this behavior

        just because you want to outsource all of your product and company research to a law or regulation, and want to be able to blindly buy products and just hope the company doesn’t make bad choices in every regard but quartly profits doesn’t mean it is the only effective check & balance

  • AllNewTypeFace@leminal.space
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    5 months ago

    They should at least release data sheets and any bootloader signing keys, allowing people to reuse the devices for other purposes. If you could replace the firmware, I’m sure you could use it for controlling your home automation setup or displaying the weather/news/train times/other info (or possibly other tasks depending on what’s in the SoC). Now, alas, it’s just e-waste.

  • tal@lemmy.today
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    5 months ago

    It’s a little annoying how the article only gives much of a hint as to what exactly a Car Thing is, beyond a “dashboard accessory”, in the last paragraph of the article:

    the product was more of a remote control for Spotify on your mobile phone than any kind of standalone player

    • misk@sopuli.xyzOP
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      5 months ago

      It’s worth noting that it was quite cheap and therefore a very good budget option to MacGyver music streaming into older cars.

    • Jesus@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Car Thing is basically the Rabbit R1, but for music. In other words, a cheap Android device, with one app (a car dashboard variation of Spotify), a scroll wheel, and a some shortcut buttons.

      It works by connecting to your phone via Bluetooth. So, yeah, instead of using the phone for the auto friendly UI, it pipes that UI to a second cheaper mobile device.

      It’s truly stupid, and it cost about the same as an external CarPlay / Android Auto screen… which could display an auto friendly Spotify UI, and much much more.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    5 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Customers who bought the Car Thing are receiving emails warning that it will stop working altogether as of December 9th.

    Unfortunately for those owners, Spotify isn’t offering any kind of subscription credit or automatic refund for the device — nor is the company open-sourcing it.

    “We’re discontinuing Car Thing as part of our ongoing efforts to streamline our product offerings,” Spotify wrote in an FAQ on its website.

    “We understand it may be disappointing, but this decision allows us to focus on developing new features and enhancements that will ultimately provide a better experience to all Spotify users.”

    The company is recommending that customers do a factory reset on the product and find some way of responsibly recycling the hardware.

    Car Thing was initially made available on an invite-only basis in April 2021, with Spotify later opening a public waitlist to buy the accessory later that year.


    The original article contains 306 words, the summary contains 145 words. Saved 53%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • Bizzle@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I bought this for my old Cadillac that only had a tape deck and it was amazing (with a Bluetooth cassette). I haven’t used it since I got rid of that old Cadillac about two years ago now. Pretty limited use case but it still sucks to kill shit for no reason.

    • Drusenija@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      I didn’t know Bluetooth cassettes were a thing, although if I think about it then of course they are. What’s the sound quality like?

  • diabeetusman@lemmynsfw.com
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    5 months ago

    I liked using mine at my desk at work. Phone in pocket, connected to headphones. Car thing on desk, controlling music

  • Nate@programming.dev
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    5 months ago

    Even Google products have a longer lifespan 😖

    I’ve since moved on to Tidal. Bought it at $30 when root mods started to be developed, but never really went anywhere.

    Image alt:

    • 2021-04-13: Interested in car thing
    • 2022-10-18: order placed after discounted to $30
    • 2022-10-21: shipped
    • 2024-05-23: Discontinue notice
    • 2024-12-09: Service discontinued
  • penquin@lemm.ee
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    5 months ago

    Xmanager is calling everyone’s name. Thank me later 😁

    Edit: really? I get downvoted for helping? 😂 I love you all, too!

  • monkeyslikebananas2@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    We need new laws y’all. All these companies should be forced to collect all their e-waste as part of their products lifecycle.

    If a company produces any product and the company has a market cap over $1billion, then they should be responsible for collecting and recycling all their trash.