Voting with your money is only effective when lots of people do it. If this product is sold in a supermarket, 99.999% of people will have no idea how to even parse this article, so everyone's decision in this thread has absolutely no measureable effect on profit, certainly not enough to make a decision to remove DRM.

But good reverse engineering (as has been done to the iPhone or Keurig) is consumable by the masses in a way that can be communicated back to the manufacturer.

Too often, it's miscommunicated as "criminals keep breaking our monetization scheme" but it's a lot more effective than shaking your fist at the sky.

Good point, in this case I didn't realise that the device had any DRM until after my first cleaning cartridge ran out. Even during initial set it up I thought that the device would simply beep and let me know it was empty while continuing being useful.

> However, knowingly buying hardware with DRM of this nature only signals the acceptability of this utter garbage to the marketplace. The best way to "hack" them is by not buying it at all, or disassembly if given.

Frequently the cost of the item is offset by the expected gains from the DRMed consumable; enough people buying the litter box but not their soap would cause the company to lose money—a net negative.

A net positive if it makes companies stop distorting prices with such bullshit. Selling hardware below design/manufacturing costs and recouping losses via consumables/subscription should be considered antisocial business practice, as it not only is user-hostile itself, but also forces everyone on the market to follow suit.

I meant, a net negative in money.

I have a DRM 3D printer (XYZ DaVinci), and I would buy another. I've never had to do anything to it except level the bed, feed it STL files, and clean/glue stick the bed. I have had hundreds of successful prints, indeed my first print (an angled foregrip for an AR15 rifle) is still in service.

I never wanted a 3D printing hobby, all I wanted was a tool (like a hammer or soldering iron) that I could use to further my actual hobbies. XYZ gave me exactly that. For me at least, I find the descriptions 'scam' and 'garbage' to be nothing more than emotive angst.

So, pedantic question: isn't repair implicit in reduce and reuse?

I would sure hope so, since the idea is that they're in order of best-to-worst for the environment.

Reduce: don't buy water bottles in the first place, as they're one of the biggest pollutants.

Reuse: If you're gonna buy water bottles, reuse them for other liquids when you're done instead of buying a separate vessel for them.

Recycle: When that fails (i.e., when you've got water bottles that you can't really reuse, or whatever…) have that plastic recycled to make, well, more water bottles.

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If "repair" is the "fourth R" in "reduce, reuse, and recycle" that would imply it's less environmentally efficient to repair something than to simply toss it into the recycling bin.

I wasn't going by any sort of order. Repair seems to have been left out on the 3 R's.

I remember opening up equipment from before 1980, and you were greeted with circuit schematics, diagrams, and replacement part numbers. Replacement of a single component was usually simple, and very cost effective. For some, it may take a few weeks to get the thing, but arrive it did.

Now, people throw out wide screen TVs and all sorts of electronics. Why? A cap popped, or a resistor burned out. Someone spend $399, and it was foiled by a $.05 component. But what about swapping the board responsible? Nope, it's all "non-user-servicable" aka buy more crap you lazyass consumer.

And what this cat litter cleaner ultimately is; it's a device that does a thing as long as you keep feeding money in it from the approved source. It's not like a pillow, or a chair, or a tv. It would be more like those, if it weren't for the fact that built in is a device that obeys its owner - and you aren't that owner; you're the owned.