My pocket knife is hot pink, my socket wrenches are dipped pink, and most of my powertools have a flair of pink somewhere from a can of Krylon. Pink is natures danger color for the average nail swatter pounding monster energy and fried cake from the 7-11 at 4 AM. my job boxes are covered in unicorn stickers and rainbows.
There's a reason every large facility that provides its own tools has a tool crib where they track who checked out what.
It has become a lot of fun to strip DRM from anything I own. This feeling of freedom that I have that most consumers don't is exhilarating and sad at the same time.
We are still in the "good old days" where we can still choose to live most of life without DRM but I know the end will be coming one day.
I guess I can prolong it by maintaining my good makita tools, keep my N64 in tip top shape and take good care of whatever else I think will be DRM'ed in the future.
Things want to be as simple as they can be. DRM adds cost and complexity, it will _always_ be fighting an uphill battle. An electric drill is just an electric motor + chuck, MOSFET + pot, and a battery. Anything added on top of that has to justify itself.
Take a look at the printer industry, for example. You can buy the cartridge cartel inkjet printers, but most people already know that a laserjet is way more reliable -- because it's so simple.
Yes "things want to be as simple as they can be"...so when something dumb like DRM is bolted onto it, you point allows us strip it out that much easier. I believe that one day the design of an item will put DRM first and function second such that the item itself will be secondary to the DRM. I don't know what form this will take but I feel that it is coming. That is why I discussed maintaining my old equipment as long as possible to stall this inevitable day as long as possible.
>Take a look at the printer industry, for example. You can buy the cartridge cartel inkjet printers, but most people already know that a laserjet is way more reliable -- because it's so simple.
I'd argue that you are conflating two different things: Reliability with freedom(lack of DRM).
Laser printers are more reliable not due to the DRM but due to the technology itself.
If you wanna look at it from another POV: Laser printers suffer from cartridge lockout chips that count number of pages printed, the yellow dots printed on sheets that allow the government to trace a printed document back to a specific printer and now the encroaching trend of adding spyware to the printer drivers. Does that make Laser printer technology any worse? Nope. But all that DRM is there regardless of how good laser tech is.
Power tool DRM would, inevitably, be used in an anti-consumer fashion.
Watch pre-DRM and 'jailbroken' power tools become highly sought after, lol.
You could buy a third-party manufacturer's tools because they're cheaper, but when they can't keep the lights on and they shut off the authentication servers, well you're SOL
A WiFi MP3 player with "unlimited music through life" and few paid premium tracks, which the client planned to suddenly switch into not so unlimited, and subscription only in the course of 2-3 years through the power of fine print, and legalese. Bait, and switch.
Stuff like DRMed consumables for water filters, coffee machine capsules, subscription only air fresheners, and DRMed packed fresh food! is already a reality.
And if you don't believe about microchipped, DRMed food, here it is:
Each pack is made of a very, very sturdy piece of plastic, and an NFC chip, and a single use QR code which will invalidate itself after a single online lookup for an unlock key.
User puts this "food cartridge" into the machine, and scans the code. The machine will cut open the cartridge, and cook the stuff inside.
It will of course refuse to cook if your "food subscription" is expired, or if it thinks the NFC chip is fake. Or at least this is how they wanted it to be in their original design proposal.
Whatever engineering company who took them as a client probably managed to tone down their fantasies a bit.
Brave new world...
Tesla makes software performance unlocks, K-Cups have DRM on their pods, and your xbox or playstation hardware is subsidized by the license costs on the games you're gonna buy in the same way your printer is cheap because the ink cartridges are expensive.
Only a matter of time before you can buy a $20 cordless drill but the charger requires a $15/mo Battery Conditioning Cloud subscription.
Mechanics (auto, airline) don't normally go to HD or Lowes - they buy from SnapOn, Cromwell, or Mac - all three send salespeople in large box trucks full of tools to work site. And all three offer credit and payment plans. And when tools break, those trucks come by with replacements.
The white collar internet loves to blindly fetishize "quality" tools but professionals are always trying to strike a balance because every buck spent on overhead is a buck you're not getting paid and having breadth of tools is often more important than quantity since having the right tool matters a lot more than having a nice tool and if you don't buy nice tools you can afford to have the right tool more often. For secondary "luxury" tools that just make a job faster (like a ratcheting box wrench) many people buy the cheap stuff whereas tools you only use when you really need them (like flare nut wrenches) tend to be higher quality.
I still buy some Harbor Freight tools, especially if I only need it for a one-off job, but the higher-end tool names are often genuinely better, not just higher priced.
Whether a fancy ratchet is worth it depends a lot on how much you use your impact wrench. People tend to buy high end versions of the tools they use the most. There's plenty of professional roofers who have a $400 nail guns that weigh nothing and a couple clunky old HF framing guns on the truck. An electrician probably has a pawn shop or harbor freight hammer drill. The plumber probably has a nice hammer drill.
But if you're a young guy just getting started in a trade, and you can choose between a cheap socket set plus two dates with your girlfriend, or a premium socket set? 9/10 guys would choose the former.
It's usually either American, Taiwanese or Chinese, and a reputable shop like Angle Repair, for example, absolutely will not touch a Chinese torque wrench, and might only ever touch a Taiwanese torque wrench if it's a warrantied item on one of their supported brands, and probably only with some arm twisting on the part of the vendor they're doing warranty work for.
I don't know how much this is fetishizing versus simply having different priorities.
White collar tech people using tools are more likely to be doing so for hobby or recreation. They have spare money and their goal is a maximally enjoyable experience. With those priorities, it makes sense to buy better tools than you could justify economically.
That certainly wasn't my intention. My last roommate was an auto mechanic, then later a SnapOn dealer. He and the techs at the shops he serviced had massive rolling carts that cost $20k+ filled with another $30k in tools.
Certainly there were some cheaper tools in those carts, but as far as I could tell, they were mostly SnapOn or Mac.
There are some specialty tools that are sufficiently rare or expensive they'll get at trade-specific supply houses. Plumbers in particular can do the job either with a $5 saw and a bottle of glue or a $500 PEX expansion tool, depending on material.
The exception is something like high-end finish carpentry or furniture-making, which is high-precision, and does reward having professional tools and taking care of them. They have brands like Festool, which are available at specialty retailers.
I called my plumber late in the day and he stopped by on the way home from another gig. He didn’t have the tool on him, so instead he spent about 15 minutes forcing the handle of a socket wrench into the PEX so he could manually cram in a connector. It was remarkable, like watching someone tear a phone book in half. PEX is tough as hell.
If the sockets were this way, I would also expect that to be the same across the things like wrenches as well. The great thing about SnapOn is that truck. They will show up without the need for you to go somewhere. Their warranty wasn't any different than Craftsman's life time warranty, except you had to find a Sears.
Kind of beside the point, but you don't really even see pneumatics in construction much anymore. The _only_ pneumatic tool on my current project is my framing nailer. Every single other power tool is electric (mostly battery). Some companies are even making battery powered framing nailers now, and my corded worm drive saw finally broke after 15 years so I think I'll be upgrading to a battery powered saw in the near future. In a few years, I expect I'll be able to frame a house with entirely battery powered tools.
Shop equipment used to be done by trade show, not sure how it works these days.
Good stuff largely comes from wizard stores. They're mostly locally owned or small, regional chains with a few national chains most muggles haven't heard of. Electrical stuff comes from Needco, Rexel, and Graybar where I live. I bought some Klein screwdrivers at a Rexel, because Klein (and maybe Wera) are the last ones making decent screwdrivers generally and cabinet-tip screwdrivers specifically.
They were $9-$10 a piece instead of that much for a set, but they're made right, and they're readily available if you know where to look.
My handheld power tools mostly come from lumber yards or local hardware stores. And I happily pay more for Makita over DeWalt, Milwaukee, Rigid, etc from the box stores. Not looking to start a flame war over who makes better tools, but the Makita stuff is consistently excellent and priced fairly for the quality.
I've probably used a wider variety of routers than any other type of tool, and it's true that you get what you pay for, especially for plunge routers. The plunge action is just smoother and more precise as you go up in price. Bosch also makes a pretty good one, for what it's worth.
Though I build furniture, not houses, I end up shopping at a lot of the same places as carpenters. You consistently see Festool for handheld power tools (and I do own a Domino), Stabila for levels, Freud, Whiteside and/or Amanda for router bits, Freud or Forrest for saw blades, and Tajima for a wide variety of layout and hand tools. Tajima makes an outstanding chalk line and the nicest caulk gun I've ever laid my eyes on.
You might see Freud router bits at a box store, but never the selection that a wizard store stocks. You'll pay more, but the sales people know their stuff, and you can get it today, not tomorrow. That's worth a couple bucks if time is money. Incidentally, Freud also makes the Diablo saw blades that you find at box stores, and they're excellent value for the money.
Tools truly specific to furniture making are usually a specialist supplier. You can buy an approximation if a combination square or marking gauge at a box store, but it'll be less irritating to just take your money and light it on fire. Woodcraft and Rockler both have decent stuff if you're near a brick and mortar location. If you aren't, they sell online as does Highland Hardware, and a bunch of other vendors.
How do you know if you're in a wizard store or a muggle store? Wizard stores usually keep hours that reflect the fact that most of their customers are there during their workday, not on their time off. If a store closes by 5:30 and aren't open on the weekend, guaranteed they're a wizard store.
There was a story the other day that Office 2010 was no longer activating in some regions because the activation servers just aren't there anymore. The downside of having an iphone-esque "activation lock" is that you could be left with a 10yo drill that isn't permitted to turn on because the activation servers have been abandoned - and any sensible workaround negates its use as a theft deterrent.
I'm guessing people wouldn't be very happy with this user experience though. Cost for biometric implementation would likely be cost prohibitive.
1. https://www.americas1stfreedom.org/articles/2014/8/8/whats-s...
True, that didn't really come to mind since they don't generally talk about allowing that for guns. The best thing is probably using one's phone as the token since the phone has bluetooth and this article mentions that the tools are unlocked with that.
The reason I brought up biometrics is that the unlocking 'token' is less likely to get lost than the bracelet, etc. But that does bring up another good point, that some of the common biometrics like fingerprints wouldn't work since many people wear work gloves.
Although, it would provide a good large-scale proof of concept for smart gun tech if it worked the same as the proposed smart gun tech.
— Future internet of shit post
A cashier once forgot to remove the alarm thing on an item I purchased after checking me out. The alarm went off about 20 feet before I was at the sensor, by the time another group was passing through. The security guard checked them and their receipts and let them go. When I passed through no alarm went off.
I'll take the "reason I only buy razor blades online" as an example. I knew my Gillette was really dull and that I'd been out for going on a week, but kept forgetting to pick some up until I stopped at Walgreen's on the way home. I went to the aisle with the blades and was met with a card, instead of a set of blades. I took said card to the register. Walgreens is so slow; I swear the operate on one employee except when the Pharmacy is open. I get to the front, have the card and a now-annoyed cashier.
Three people behind me, she gets on the speaker and calls for assistance, has me step aside and starts ringing up the person behind me. Three people go through the register when Mr. Break comes up to the front to retrieve my item. He grabs the card, looks dubiously at it, says something quiet to the cashier and disappears. Two more customers later, he's back.
"We're out of this one."
"There were several cards there."
"We're supposed to get more in, today."
So I left. About a week later I remembered to order a few hundred dollars' worth online.
In defense of your post, I've seen it work. Except this last holiday season -- mostly due to the restrictions placed on them by the state I live in -- my local Microcenter usually handles this well. If I've happened upon a sales-person, the item I want is taken to the front/locked up before I get there so at least when I'm checking out, I'm not also waiting on someone to find the thing[0].
[0] That ... on one occasion ... ended up being purchased by someone else since I was visiting the store with my boss from out of town and we ended up spending a solid 5 hours there one afternoon.
This involves paying someone to be the "they" to hand it to you and companies don't want to pay employees if they can possibly avoid it.
The people you are able to find seem to be brand new at the job and are basically useless, even for simple things like getting the right online order picked from the shelf behind them as they have no idea what the organizational system is.
It's not just that you have to pay someone to do this, you have to be able to simply hire a warm body, and right now that seems horribly hard in retail where I am.
I mean, they kind of thought about CX! They didn't want to go with locked containers because they "don't want to affect the 99.5% of our customers who are just there to pick up their hammers and nails". Those 99.5% of customers who would see (not interact with—just see!) said locked container.
Then they go with this complex supply chain solutions that requires additional complexity (e.g., bluetooth technology) to be incorporated at the design step with vendors to make it all work.
That has to be multitudes more expensive than security tags and gates.
What's the error rate on that process? How many legitimate customers are going to be negatively affected by a miss in the "tool activation" step? And think about it: you're not going to figure out that they missed a step until you get home. Not like the alarm going off when you try to walk out the door before they forgot to remove it. Annoying, but at least you're still at the store!
All this in the name of deterrence. Those "silly alarm systems" aren't designed to catch shoplifters... they're to discourage people from shoplifting. Same thing here.
After all, it's not like the shoplifters are going to return the tools that don't work!
CompUSAs big shrink issues were more organized criminals popping boxes open or flooding the store. I worked at one that was hit by a crime bus — 50 mostly non-English speaking Asians would occupy every employee and loot the place. (They hit all of the big box retailers in our area). The biggest issue was internal fraud.
Internal fraud was incredible. One day just about the entire warehouse staff and I want to say a third of the floor staff was fired. If memory serves, the warehouse manager discovered that a large number of specialty "Made for Compaq/Dell" RAM by one of the major RAM vendors had its "COST" value set very wrong (to like $5.00 or something like that). The price paid by employees was whatever IMS said "COST" was. So a $350 memory chip could be purchased for $5.00 by an employee. After figuring it out, of course, he shared the knowledge with other members of staff who participated, as well. Dad always said "if it seems too good to be true, it is", so that -- alone -- was enough to keep me from making that mistake.
The other scam I recall them running was taking items home that were supposed to be destroyed per agreement with the manufacturer. It was very strange coming to work one day and finding out about half of the staff I used to work with was let go for fraud...
[0] We had this one local gentleman who was notoriously frustrating to handle. He'd come in with a million questions, spoke very poor English very quickly and became frustrated to the point of yelling, I think, "F** YOU" at me/storming off when I told him I was having a difficult time understanding ... due to an ear ache (didn't even mention said English; I was pretty good at understanding thick accents, normally).
[1] Not as great as it sounds -- I doubt it was "invoice cost", but if it was a PC/laptop/anything terribly expensive, it was frequently higher than the price of the item.
Corporate customers were usually paying on pricing terms that were "X% above cost". And enterprise sales had flexibility further to close a deal. These one-off products had something to do with that -- perhaps it allowed them to offer pre-configured systems for some customers that calculated to the agreed-upon price when their % above cost was calculated, or maybe it was just a way to "throw in the RAM on all of these shiny new Packard (Bells)".
And then there are these thingies:
https://www.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-security-tag-detector...
A friend of mine and I had these door alarm systems go off while ENTERING a store.
We (around 13 or 14 at that time) had to take off most of our clothes in front of other customers (in the middle of the entry next to the registers) until the "store detective" found out it was my friends cap, wet from the rain that day, that triggered the system.
Never told anyone because we were ashamed af.
these are called deterrents. same as cctv and other tech. they're not bulletproof, their aim is to make life harder for the perp.
Source: I used to shoplift as a kid. Don't grab the shit with buzzers.
This sounds an awful lot like how the Amazon retail / grocery stores work. You arrive, scan a QR code at a gate as you walk in. You take whatever you want, and then leave without dealing with anyone. A bit later, you receive a bill in your email and a charge is made to your card.
It's seamless and super convenient. It's also super creepy once you think about how it must work. I don't think I'd go back after that one visit.
I don't know if that is still the case, or it is just that thieves go for the easy stores that don't have any security. Back before reddit banned r/shoplifting I lurked there out of curiosity, and it seemed that those who posted there had pretty good ways around that security.
You have been randomly selected to receive a door prize! We just need to confirm your receipt first…
I learned a lot of basic retail stuff at that job, like the fact that, for emergencies, all automatic sliding doors have to be capable of being pushed open. It seems like all the shoplifters knew it, there were a few times I saw someone bang straight on through them.
More technology? Maybe the wrong direction.
Oldest "hack" in modern shoplifting is to swap the contents of the boxes. You open two boxes on the floor, swap tools, get the better tool charged for the lesser-priced tool.
Or as you suggest, merely remove the identification tag so it is not charged at all.
Maybe just bring back cashiers to ring people up?
I'm not sure who pointed it out, but we learned that simply pushing on the top of the "tag" would keep it from triggering the alarm. A few years later, the boxes started showing up with the tags on the inside (that was nice; we no longer had to tag those boxes before stocking them).
I still wonder, though, if they served any purpose outside of frustrating legitimate customers. I get that they are supposed to serve as a deterrent to casual theft, but when the cameras came in and we started bringing the cops by almost every day for theft, it was clear that the alarm system was serving very little useful purpose.
[0] I was 16 at the time!
I have bought items without the anti-theft devices being removed, everything from guns to booze.
In the latter case, on one of the occasions when that happened, it was possible albeit slightly challenging to simply wriggle the anti-theft device off.
In other cases, though, I had to return to the store.
> The alternative is to turn the whole thing upside down. Change the way shopping is done so that shoplifting doesn't work. I fill a cart, walk through the gate out the door and receive a total, passing my card/phone over a sensor to pay.
Your post seemed to start with criticising security being in charge of customer experience, and seemed to end with proposing changing the entire shopping experience to avoid theft.
It's much more convenient to just not have a door or always leave it unlocked.
For example, we've all encountered those silly alarm systems at the doors. As I've never been a shoplifter, I've never had those go off on me except in error. When I worked at CompUSA for 5 years, we had a greeter at the door who told me "they've never once, in 15 years, caught a shoplifter". They went off several times a day, so the only people being stopped at the door were people who had purchased their goods being treated like a shoplifter.
I'm assuming this system will work a lot better than the old, but if I got my tool home and it simply didn't work, I'd be extremely frustrated -- especially if I could have avoided both drives to the retail store and had the product delivered tomorrow, instead.
The alternative is to turn the whole thing upside down. Change the way shopping is done so that shoplifting doesn't work. I fill a cart, walk through the gate out the door and receive a total, passing my card/phone over a sensor to pay. Of course, this means it's on Home Depot to get it right and I'm sure there will be ways to defeat the system. If they fail to ring up an item because it's not detected in the cart, I'm not sure if they have legal recourse at that point, but it also serves to motivate them to make the system a lot more reliable than the current ones are. And you stop treating your customers like shoplifters :)