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Tweet: Okay I thought this one straight up has to be hyperbole, there's no way they'd make an airbag that checks your subscription status or it doesn't go off, but it's fucking TRUE: "Without the subscription service from In&Motion, the airbag system is non-operational."
Quoted tweet: Reminder that Klim makes a motorcycle airbag vest that has a subscription service and if you don't pay and get in a wreck it just doesn't go off
Google results screenshot: Ai-1 Airbag Vest (Klim) - Choose from $12/month or $120/year subscription options, which include...
Original tweet dated 30th April 2021
This is absolutely going to get somebody who had a subscription killed because the airbag couldn't connect to the service to check in the 1/4 of a second it had to go off.
that's absurd, it probably checks in periodically when it's in range of service and then decides whether to brick itself. it's going to get somebody who had a subscription killed because of a database error or bugged firmware update.
Okay, so apparently there's an indicator light at the beginning that tells you if your subscription is active. Presumably they have at least one person who passed their realtime programming course and it's designed around making sure you never give off a green light unless the suit is ready to inflate.
But a company that charges a subscription for airbag deployment may be too cheap to hire actual software engineers lmao
Presumably they have at least one person who passed their realtime programming course and it's designed around making sure you never give off a green light unless the suit is ready to inflate.
wheeze
Surely the "subscription airbag" company understands design of safety-critical systems amd would not cut corners for the sake of profit.
I get frustrated when a game glitches out, but it's ludicrous that this could happen with an airbag.
Presumably they have at least one person who passed their realtime programming course
You guys have courses for that? I just set CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT=Y and go about my day.
reupping my subscription on the road and dying because I didn't drive close enough to any routers
“Your Honor, the records clearly state the deceased was in violation of the terms of service due to dying during the payment processing window.”
i have but i was pretending not to for the purposes of the bit to play with some other failure modes, in truth i acknowledge that the possibility of that is not so absurd
Screaming "siri renew my airbag subscription!" as I'm flying through the air
The Ai-1 Airbag Vest and In&Box DPP (Detect-Protect-Perfect) platform is the first continually evolving motorcycle protection technology driven by artificial intelligence.
Honestly just having the airbag be electronic is dangerous enough. Imagine dying because you forgot to plug your airbag in a couple days in a row and the battery was out.
STOP PUTTING THE INTERNET INTO EVERYTHING!!! STOP MAKING EVERYTHING A SUBSCRIPTION MODEL!!!
STOOPPPP
but I just want an unlimited constant income stream with no more effort! Meritocracy!
hitting this dude with that dolphin device and watching his airbag inflate and deflate every 5 seconds
I think this vest uses a proprietary canister so it can only go off once.
It's $12 a month, surely you loony leftists can afford that.Dying in a crash because my ping was too high to activate my airbag on time
Somehow the stupidest thing happened and we live in the Watch_Dogs imagined future where hackers will be able to kill you with your internet-of-things connected vegetable juice machine.
That's why you buy the juicero instead, the packets are all it works with so hackers can't kill you with it
Truly ahead of its time and all times really, yet another win for the juicero
wait so the vest is networked?
next question: is it secure?
There are many things that make me glad that I am not a motorcycle guy
This is one of them
There are airbags out there that use a simple tether. Small bumps don't set it off, but if you're thrown from your bike it does, no electronics necessary.
Alternatively if you ride with someone, they can be your airbag.
Shit at that point it would probably be safer to just bypass it manually, dig in there for the can and connect the valve to some piano wire or something, hook the other end onto your bike so it gets pulled automatically like a grenade if you leave your seat. The tripwire that saves you instantly
that's already a thing. much cheaper and it uses standard air canisters.
Unironically love unknowingly inventing things that have already been invented, it's like a little test to see if brain still work good
meanwhole bazingas microdose lsd to make sure they only invent things that are shittier versions of what already exist lol.
Next service: subscription door locks. If you’re trapped in your burning car, you must subscribe to unlock.
If you don't like it, just shop around for another "unlock the doors to your burning car" service.
You jest, but this could be the basis for a class action of sorts.
You own a car for what, 10 years? So for those 10 years, the car company has you by the balls. They can introduce new subscriptions or change your car's computer in any way. And no one else can. Car companies should be forced to interoperable with other car operating systems and allow other companies to release competing services for that car brand.
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It's more of reskinned lease scheme. These are expensive devices, and you can either buy the whole device up-front, or you can buy a cheaper version and pay a monthly fee to make up the difference. Either $800 up front, or $400 up front + $12/mo or $120/yr for three years.
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There is no world in which you die because "your airbag's ping is too high". It checks your subscription once a day before you leave home; part of getting ride-ready is making sure your airbag is prepped. If you have no sub, the device warns you, the same as if the airbag was faulty or unready for any other reason.
It's absurd on the face of it, but I'm not sure it's worse than a world where motorcyclists don't get airbags if they don't have $800 right now.
In the event you don't pay they have made a deliberate decision to just let you die. Wall.
In your opinion, would it be better if the lease scheme didn't exist, and the only way to have one at all was to pay $800 up front?
Again, it's not like it's going to catch you by surprise. You are alerted well before you ever even get on your bike, as you're putting the vest on, that it's inactive. You have to make the choice to ride with an inactive vest. It doesn't check your payment status mid-crash or shut off mid-ride. Other vest manufacturers only offer a full-price one-time-purchase. These guys have gone out of their way to make it more accessible to people who can't pay $800 up front. If they simply never checked, people would just buy the vest for "half price", and the company quickly couldn't afford to offer it. They've made it as safe as possible while not letting themselves go out of business. I'm not sure what else you want them to do.
Gonna be honest, I just don't think this is an appropriate model for an air bag. Disabling a potentially life saving device just because someone didn't pay money is kind of a shitty thing to do no matter how you look at it.
If someone rents something monthly and stops paying partway through, we already have existing systems in place to deal with this sort of thing. Let it keep working and deal with it through the proper channels.
What's the functional difference between "disable the vest remotely" and "send repo men to take the vest away"? In either case, you no longer have access to the air bag, but in the former case you can resume paying for it much more easily. I would personally far rather a "subscription" than a traditional lease; I can stop paying when I don't need the thing or can't afford it, and seamlessly resume using it when I need to and have money.
What's the functional difference between "disable the vest remotely" and "send repo men to take the vest away"?
If there's no functional difference then why turn it off? It's unnecessary bullshit that had to be designed and would have cost them nothing to not do in the first place. Why spend more money and make it more complicated for no gain? And you're even opening up security vulnerabilities by letting it connect to the internet.
I would personally far rather a "subscription" than a traditional lease; I can stop paying when I don't need the thing or can't afford it, and seamlessly resume using it when I need to and have money.
I would rather there not be any sort of subscription model for fucking safety equipment. If your netflix subscription expires because you're broke that's one thing, it won't kill you, but for equipment that is designed to save lives, turning it off because someone is poor is fucking barbaric, especially when it would have cost them nothing to leave it turned on.
It doesn't cost them nothing. If they left it on without payment, then people would just buy the subsidized one and never pay the sub. The company can't afford to sell all the vests at half price. Then they couldn't afford to offer the subscription option anymore. Without a method to enforce payment, the only option is to price poor people out entirely. That's worse, not better.
It just does not occur to you that people shouldn't have to pay out the ass or be subject to all this arbitrary subscription bullshit for safety equipment, does it? "Oh no what about their profit motive" I don't give a fuck. If this equipment really is a huge improvement for the safety of motorcyclists then maybe it should be nationalized and subsidized so it can be affordable for anyone who rides a motorcycle and so people's lives aren't dictated by a handful of rich fucks who only care about their bottom line.
Of course it occurred to me, which is why I framed it the way I did. I don't disagree, obviously it should be easily available. However, villainizing this specific company for finding a way to make it more easily available than their counterparts who price poor people out entirely is a step backwards. Villainize the government and the system for putting us here. Villainizing a company that found a way to work within the stupid framework we're stuck in to do something, even if it's less than perfect, to make it more affordable, for taking basic steps to make sure they don't go out of business for it, is nuts.
However, villainizing this specific company for finding a way to make it more easily available than their counterparts who price poor people out entirely is a step backwards
Oh shit, I didn't know they were doing this out of the goodness of their hearts! You should have told me this to begin with!
They did it this way because they thought it would earn them the most profit. If you think it's for any other reason than that, then you don't really understand how capitalism works.
Capitalists finding a way to tap into the market of "people who can't afford motorcycle air bag vests" means poor people have access to it when they previously didn't. Is it worse than a world where anyone could get one for free from the DMV or take it out from a library or something? Yes, absolutely. That's easily preferable to this. Is it better than a world where poor people had no way to access it? I would say so.
Don't simp for capitalist pigs because they throw you a crumb every once in a while, it's a bad look. Take back the fucking bakery.
fuck me.. i wish i could pull my head through my asshole and back out again and still be able to walk upright.. what a neat party trick
It doesn't cost them nothing. If they left it on without payment, then people would just buy the subsidized one and never pay the sub.
Just sell the vest at the subsidized price then. I promise you they aren't doing this out of some desperate need to hold onto razor thin margins, the upfront payment probably already nets them a tidy profit they're just trying to milk people who don't have as much upfront cash by rent seeking.
Really we should just abolish capitalism.
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You will own nothing and be happy.
