What I don’t see is how HD can pull it off in practical terms. Way to many small shops, way to many bikes with carburetors vs efi. can’t think of the products name but the tuner on my Raider doesn’t require extra software. It reads reads the fuel air mixture 90 times a second and adjusts from there. The guy who tuned my Electra glide has his on software

Seems impractical

If HD controls the software, all they are doing is creating a market for hacked software. If I, as a HD owner, have to have the right software running to get my plates, I will…when getting my plates.

You know, if the West really wants to become Brezhnev’s USSR, it should be kept in mind that a hundred seventy million people lived in the USSR, and they all found ways to work the system as needed. Sure, it was not great, but there were definite good sides.

and what with all this “bear with me” and being chased by lions, i figure you might like this, even if fake:

Prophetic words, only becoming more true every day.

In general I’m fairly laid back about minor things, and lazy when it comes to modifying toys that otherwise work fine. The only exception is general maintenance and fixing things when they break, which I try to stay on top of. Thing is, all this garbage sold today arrives broken before you even buy it. This obsessive quest for control and profit only creates shitty products that barely work as they’re supposed to. And any attempt to get them to just work is now considered a “violation of terms and service” or some other BS.

It used to be, if you bought a book, you owned it. Now, if I buy a kindle book and want to let my friend borrow it, it starts a 2 week timer where both parties have to coordinate schedules unless they want to go through the trouble of setting up the transfer when the book escapes their attention every time.

You can’t own houses, only lease them from the government. You can’t inherit a farm, you must pay huge sums of estate taxes. I used to not care that much, but it’s now becoming too obvious and ubiquitous to ignore. Why bother? No, I won’t play your game or buy your products if these are the new rules.

A car used to be a car. Now it’s a leased computer that you can drive. A phone used to be a phone, now it’s a tracking device that makes calls. I never wanted to bother with learning to root phones and mess around with them, but I’m certainly considering it now. It’s almost a necessity at this point.

This trend for absolute control and profit couldn’t come at a worse time. Most people are struggling to get by, and monopolistic rent seeking will only cause these psychopaths to try to squeeze more juice out of rocks. People are increasingly desperate, and this will only ensure that the ensuing years will be even more of an interesting time.