Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 250 posts

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#221

Post by eadler »

lupire wrote: post #99
goodluckchuck wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t need more laws. We need to repeal the arbitration act, and let things like this get resolved in court, where we can establish a precedent against this kind of stuff.

Arbitration costs Spotify more than the refund. What's wrong with mass arbitration?

https://arbitrationinformation.org/docs/problems/#mass-arbit... has some details.

I also need to some detail about how companies are trying to enforce MDL-like bellwether and mass-arbitration rules in order to further reduce costs and chance of success.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#222

Post by [deleted] »

haliskerbas wrote: post #116
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The photos of landfills full of e-scooters make me physically ill.

The current U.S. economic system doesn't support or incentivize caring about those things. Would you advocate for a system or policies that does incentivize it?

[deleted]

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#223

Post by voxic11 »

RIMR wrote: post #173
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Spotify is a Swedish company, I'm sure this is why they didn't think it would be an issue.

This isn't the reason why. Spotify has been a major player in the U.S. music streaming market for a long time. They have their own offices here, and these kinds of decisions are surely made domestically. The reason for this is simply incompetence. They were given the order from leadership to discontinue Car Thing to cut costs, and they are given a short deadline with no options for extending or unlocking the hardware…

Are you a spotify insider? You seem to know a lot about how they operate, thanks for the insight.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#224

Post by hypercube33 »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #160
Anthony-G wrote: post #126

When I read stories about companies like Spotify creating e-waste like this, I think it’s worth pointing out that commercial companies don’t have to behave this way. As a counter-point, back around 2008, I purchased two Squeezebox music players from Logitech (digital music players that Logitech had acquired from Slim Devices: high quality DACs that supported every audio format, gap-less playback, synchronised playing…

Logitech seem to be crazy about user support somehow. I had one of their old Harmony IR remote controls, and when they discontinued the software used for programming the older generations of remotes, they sent me a brand new remote free of charge .

I have a fleet of harmony remotes and they all still work great. I'll continue using them until an open source alternative arrives that fills this void

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#225

Post by kjkjadksj »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #160
Anthony-G wrote: post #126

When I read stories about companies like Spotify creating e-waste like this, I think it’s worth pointing out that commercial companies don’t have to behave this way. As a counter-point, back around 2008, I purchased two Squeezebox music players from Logitech (digital music players that Logitech had acquired from Slim Devices: high quality DACs that supported every audio format, gap-less playback, synchronised playing…

Logitech seem to be crazy about user support somehow. I had one of their old Harmony IR remote controls, and when they discontinued the software used for programming the older generations of remotes, they sent me a brand new remote free of charge .

To a degree. They forced ghub upon us which doesn’t even open most of the time on macos at least

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#226

Post by kjkjadksj »

crazygringo wrote: post #211
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If anything, newer refrigerators and dishwashers are worse than they used to be, because they have to conform to increasingly strict energy usage laws. The new dishwasher we have now is shit, reuses water between cycles, uses some weird system for drying, etc. Basically we use more energy to pre-wash or post-wash stuff now.

At least with dishwashers, part of the reason is actually that home dishwasher detergents are no longer allowed to have phosphates. And for a lot of people the no-phosphates thing happened around the same time they got an energy-efficient dishwasher. And then they blamed the bad dishwasher performance on the energy efficiency, when it's actually that home dishwasher detergent is far less effective now. Except restaur…

Counter point: my basic old crank and go Frigidaire is still a workhorse with modern soap. I use barely any of the powdered stuff probably a lot less than is in a pod, and it still works. I’m wondering now just how little soap I can get away with to be honest.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#227

Post by brnt »

Rinzler89 wrote: post #141
flerchin wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the past 10 years I've recycled all of my large appliances. My (texas) city comes and picks them up at no charge, and I don't feel that's an unusual situation.

>My (texas) city comes and picks them up at no charge, and I don't feel that's an unusual situation. That IS pretty unusual, and in a positive way. I live in one of EU's richest socialist countries (Austria) and here YOU have bare the cost of transporting your old fridge or washing machine to the city's recycling depot, which is a huge expense for your average joe as that means owning or renting a car plus renting a…

Here in the Netherlands the 'ijzerboer' will pick up anything made with sufficient percentages of steel. Washing machines included. Soms places you need to call them, in some they just drive through once a week.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#228

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

Philip-J-Fry wrote: post #9

Are they just banking on people not caring enough or knowing about the refund process? Clearly it can't be better off for them to refund hundreds of thousands maybe even 1m+ people. We need laws that step in to make this impossible. Hardware should be designed so that it can be reused. Make it so that people can just reflash the memory at a minimum. There's no reason for something like this to become e-waste. And the…

> Make it so that people can just reflash the memory at a minimum

Letting the 0.1% of geeks who know how to and are interested in spending time on it reflash their hardware doesn't actually solve the problem in any meaningful way.

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#229

Post by ildon »

kuschku wrote: post #146
djc6 wrote: post #3

I reached out to them to get a refund for my Car Thing - and they actually sent me an email asking for my checking account number and routing number to be sent to them VIA EMAIL. And presumably into their ticket system where future hackers will find a nice collection of financial info. I wonder if their CISO or security team is aware of this, I reached out to address found in https://www.spotify.com/.well-known/secur…

> they actually sent me an email asking for my checking account number and routing number to be sent to them VIA EMAIL Is that an actual issue with US accounts? Over in EU it's common to publish your account number (IBAN) and routing code (BIC) on your website, letterhead, and obviously on bills you send to customers so they can pay you. They should only be able to send you money, not use it to request money, right?

Nope, your IBAN alone can be used to set up withdrawals. That has to be approved by the bank, so it's not as easy as stealing the IBAN, but still...

Re: Spotify won't open-source Car Thing, but starts refund process

#230

Post by sahila »

ssl-3 wrote: post #216
sahila wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a bit skeptical about them actually being recycled though. How many of the appliances are recyclable? What parts of them are vs what ends up in the dump? Everything I've heard - and admittedly I haven't looked too deep - is that recycling is mostly a sham and mostly just ends up as waste either here or shipped overseas for someone else to deal with.

Plastic and glass recycling is often a sham, because both things are usually of little value -- sometimes, even of negative value. A pile of plastic is mostly just a liability, with a strong likelihood of it ultimately being dumped or landfilled somewhere in the world. But metal recycling is real. Unlike plastic and glass, metal has positive value. There is an entire profitable industry that exists to recycle metal -…

Good to know, appreciate the context.
Post reply on HN