I’ve been experimenting with improving the quality of my video on calls and interviews lately, and it has been… a learning curve to say the least. I won’t go into all the gory details of that, but something I discovered in my travels irritates the shit out of me as a trend:

Having to pay to access functions of hardware objects you already own.

I’ve seen it in two examples for video cameras, Canon’s EOS camera software utility, and Camo Studio. Both want you to engage in a monthly paid subscription if you want to access 1080p video from your device. Even if your device natively already supports that otherwise. Within their product ecosystem, you can user lower resolutions for free, but you can’t access the full resolution of your camera in this apps without paying.

I think this is fucking despicable, and most certainly the way our shitty future is going. People are worried about AI taking over the world, but assholes already have.