The Off Topic Topic

[Eddie Teach]

Mislabeling it as random and kindness is assholish to the viewers.

The viewers know the score.

[Sheilbh]

I've seen this a bit with people doing videos for content of them being kind to an old person or whatever. And I always find it a little exploitative and weird and unpleasant - because it is normally something filmed like this without any obvious awareness far less consent. It's turning people into objects for content which is a bit grim.

[The Larch]

Over here some youtubers have ended up in court because of some of their pranks going too far. I guess they assume a bit of an "anything goes" attitude regarding content production.

[Josquius]

I think there's a bit of balance involved here.

Randomly give a homeless guy a few thousand dollars then if he turns around and sues claiming all this stuff about infringement of privacy then that's quite over the line into being a dick. Sure, ideally, you want to upload the video with his consent and all that, but its hard to argue what you did was damaging even if your motives may be unpure. Its quite a win-win.

Giving a random woman some flowers though... there's no real gain to having the flowers. She might not even like flowers. Maybe has allergies. If someone gave me some flowers it'd be a mild inconvenience. And then to turn around and present a fake story that she was thrilled...more clearly just done 100% for the gain of the person fishing for likes.

[Jacob]

I'm not sure exactly where the line is, but a business model that relies on secretly filming people as you interact with them, specifically denying it's being filmed, and then uploading it without their permission seems inappropriate to me.

[Jacob]

Draghi has resigned in Italy.

[Habbaku]

 

[HVC]

And the subscription fee model continues to move into other sectors.  BMW charging monthly fees in South Korea for different features.


https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/bmw-to-charge-car-owners-usdollar18-per-month-for-heated-seats/ar-AAZy0Tt?li=AAggNb9

[Jacob]

And the subscription fee model continues to move into other sectors.  BMW charging monthly fees in South Korea for different features.


https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/bmw-to-charge-car-owners-usdollar18-per-month-for-heated-seats/ar-AAZy0Tt?li=AAggNb9

Wild.

I don't think I'll buy a car with subscription features.

[Admiral Yi]

The weird thing about that is since the hardware is already built in, those costs are presumably already baked into the sales price.

I wouldn't feel great paying a fee to unblock something already on my car, but then again we live in an age where people are willing to pay real money to upgrade their virtual armor.

[Barrister]

Apparently you can pay a larger one-time fee to permanently unlock, or a smaller ongoing fee.

[Jacob]

Apparently you can pay a larger one-time fee to permanently unlock, or a smaller ongoing fee.

That's slightly less bad, I guess.

Still, I don't think "we'll nickel and dime you" aligns super well with BMW's positioning as a status brand.

[HVC]

Apparently you can pay a larger one-time fee to permanently unlock, or a smaller ongoing fee.

Unless I misread it you get a lower monthly fee for agreeing to a multi year commitment. The 300bucks for a 20 year licence was for CarPlay when they tried this a few years ago before backlash made them stop. But to Yi's point that was software. Now you have to pay to activate hardware.

[crazy canuck]

And the subscription fee model continues to move into other sectors.  BMW charging monthly fees in South Korea for different features.


https://www.msn.com/en-ca/money/topstories/bmw-to-charge-car-owners-usdollar18-per-month-for-heated-seats/ar-AAZy0Tt?li=AAggNb9

Wild.

I don't think I'll buy a car with subscription features.

The manufacturers may be counting on the fact that a lot of their customers lease rather than buy and so the monthly subscription melded with the lease payment may not be as jarring for those customers.  It would be very odd though to buy a car and have lingering subscription payments.

[grumbler]

The manufacturers may be counting on the fact that a lot of their customers lease rather than buy and so the monthly subscription melded with the lease payment may not be as jarring for those customers.  It would be very odd though to buy a car and have lingering subscription payments.

I think that this is exactly right.  Lessees are going to pay the "subscription fee" for that feature either to the dealer or to the manufacturer. At least this way the lessee gets to choose which features to pay a subscription fee for, rather than the lessor.