Breaking Free from DRM: Hacking My Air Purifier
unethical.infoAll this complex user-hostility for a fan with a filter. Just like with ink cartridges that only count and don't have any actual sensors, they could make an air purifier which has a differential pressure sensor to tell you how much the filter is really clogged, like many HVAC systems have, and even vacuum cleaners (some work entirely mechanically), but then they wouldn't be able to squeeze more $$$ out of the users.
A simpler solution: Just physically remove the RFID tag. The unit continues working fine without it, with no further complaints. At least on the 3H model. I think the main point of the RFID tag is mainly to prevent sellers from selling either fake, or even worse, selling cleaned but used filters as new. So when you use the air purifier with a filter without the RFID tag, it just throws a warning the first time and then just works™.
As a user it's important to know that you have an authentic, original (and new) HEPA filter. So while it's a cool hack, I really hope that this doesn't result in a flood of low quality counterfeit filters on the market.
There are many clones with RFID tags that get accepted as originals. They're even being sold as clones with generic brand names or no brand name at all. If the tag is there to prove that you've bought an authentic filter, it's not doing that very well.
HEPA filter is not a high tech device, it’s a mass produced commodity, like coffee.
Sure, quality varies, but they should all function well enough for domestic function of capturing dust and pollen.
I say this as someone who has terrible allergy, I know when they work and when they don’t, no lab equipment necessary.
The the main thing that matters in air purifier is size, for delivering volume of cleaned air.
The problem is we keep putting them into strange shapes like cylinders and every purifier has an incompatible cartridge. And also we made a filter and a fan into a strange luxury product that costs hundreds of dollars.
I will be switching to IKEA purifiers because they are flat, simple, and filters are cheap.
I have a Coway Airmega 150, and have been very happy with it. Coway makes a variety of models and they all are well designed. Mine is on the smaller side but it is quiet, automatic, and no annoying screens or beeps.
Those IKEA purifiers are garbage in my opinion. I sent all of them back. The flat one shook all the time and was loud, as if the fan had been badly balanced or not balanced at all. I was also not convinced by the built quality compared to my Xiaomi Air purifiers.
Show me one customer who WANTS DRM in their air purifier.
I remember when manufacturers competed to make their products desirable, and appliances came with schematics.
Those that "sort by price ascending" and click the first one, on the fan but not on the filters. DRM makes being the cheapest a viable business model, and people LOVE picking the cheapest over the best. You'll also see this in action, without DRM, whenever you buy a razor. The handles are free. But the blades will get you.
If this was restricted to the cheapest products, I'd maybe buy this, but this kind of behavior is littered across the entire price spectrum of a whole host of different products. It's less that it enables being cheap, and more that it is just an extra revenue stream that isn't visible at the time of purchase so consumers don't realize it's there and can unknowingly get locked in, but this is equally true for both $ and $$$ price levels.
>It's less that it enables being cheap, and more that it is just an extra revenue stream that isn't visible at the time of purchase so consumers don't realize it's there and can unknowingly get locked in, but this is equally true for both $ and $$$ price levels.
Absolutely. cf. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/14/business/bmw-subscription/ind... as just one example of dozens, if not hundreds.
Consumer tests also don't give a damn about DRM typically.
Not to mention it's impossible to find good consumer tests these days. Search results are 90 % SEO spam with affiliate links or "integrated advertising".
True, the Xiaomi purifiers are actually not all that cheap.
I have to say though, mine doesn't obey the DRM. It warns you if there is no sticker, but it works fine.
I've seen this strategy in airline ticket pricing too. If you fly a few times you figure out that some airlines appear cheap but they're just deferring the cost to later for luggage, seats, and amenities.
It's unavoidable that if customers have behavior X, such as tending to go for the cheapest thing, sellers in the market will develop clever strategies to game that behavior. Retailers go so far as to research how the colors, shapes, and surface textures of packaging affect buying behavior, so of course they are also going to intensively study customer price sensitivity behavior too.
I've learned that with a lot of things such as appliances, tools, and some electronics it's actually cheaper to buy the higher-end model. It's cheaper to buy one good one than two or three pieces of junk that break easily.
But in the case of budget airlines you don't have to pay any extra fees if you can correctly manoeuvre around the website. As someone who can easily travel in a shoebox with just a backpack 99% of the time, I appreciate the fact I can save some money by foregoing extras I won't need. The only dastardly move they pull is when they use dark patterns to get technologically inept people to pay for extra stuff they don't need.
I see the point you're trying to make, but I don't think it's accurate. I don't think even those people want the DRM.
They just don't realize the tradeoff they're making until it's too late.
> They just don't realize the tradeoff they're making until it's too late.
Why aren't people doing the most basic of research before buying things?
Lack of options? Show me a shaving razor or printer or air filter that isn't gouging me on the price of consumables.
Fundamentally you can make more money by overcharging for consumables and undercharging for the product itself, than you can by "fairly" charging for both. In any product or industry with high entry costs (read: low risk of new competitor market entrant showing up), many businesses realistically are going to leave that kind of money on the table?
A safety razor and a Brother B&W printer?
Our B&W Brother laser insists that the toner cartridge is empty despite still printing pages beautifully. I was able to reset the printer once, but the second time seems to be the cartridge itself.
I'm a little disappointed, to say the least.
On the other hand, after putting it on the Wi-Fi, everything was able to print without the addition of any crapware drivers. Win some lose some?
Likewise with our Canon laser, but at least it prints. It's been running on an "empty" cartridge for a year now. I don't mind an (inaccurate) effort to indicate the level of the consumables, so long as the system doesn't lock up once the controller decides it's out of toner.
Clarification: the Brother refuses to print. Your Canon would be an upgrade.
I actually thought about both of these as I was making this post.
Safety razors aren't a direct substitute for a modern standard shaving razor, even if it's arguably better.
Brother printers don't have DRM (yay!) but the toner cartridges are definitely being sold at a huge markup. That's OK because the price is fine with me, but they're still using the same "cheap product, expensive consumables" pricing model as everyone else. How could they not?
I seem to remember hearing that Brother has also decided to start with the DRM. Or maybe that was color only, seeing as you specified B&W??
there allegedly is some electronics in the ink assembly that may interfere with using non-brother branded refills, but it is possible to swap the electronics from an old toner cart into the off-brand and it will work fine. I didn't have to do it with mine.
Be aware that at least some brother lasers you have to replace another part every 10,000 sheets, which is the duration of two to five toner replacements. I am unsure if it's the heater or the laser or what.
Mine says it’s the drum. Whatever that is.
Haven’t replaced it in 10 years, haven’t reached the limit yet ;)
> Lack of options?
The market is flooded with DRM-free Air Purifiers.
> You'll also see this in action, without DRM, whenever you buy a razor
You can get an old school safety razor for under $20 and it will last forever. They are what double sided razor blades (the kind you normally see used in movies to split cocaine) were designed to fit into. Good razor blades can be found at a rate of about $0.05-$0.10 per, and last about 4-5 shaves - for me at least - before they start going dull and pulling. They also get me as clean of a shave as any other razor
Still not sure why people pay 10x more on cartridge systems, but maybe I'm just weird
I have used every type of razor. I definitely get the smoothest shave with the least effort with the cartridge types. Safety razors are OK, I don't cut myself a lot with them, but I feel like I never get the closeness that I want.
Ultimately, electric razors are my favorite. You have to do a fair amount of work to get a close shave, but you also don't have to later up and you shove it in a charging base to clean it every day. I'm not sure it saves much money (when you replace the foils as recommended), but it is convenient and does a good enough job for me.
> on the fan but not on the filters. DRM makes being the cheapest a viable business model
I'd argue that this technique is borderline fraud. It plays against the common assumptions of what the product is without advertising it.
Only if you don't attach them to the handle.
Not just DRM. I don't want any kind of computer either. The filter should slide/pop in and there should be a power switch that has maybe 2 to 3 speeds.
The fact that my cheap-o air purifier has soft buttons and no way to turn it on autonomously (I.e. on an automated outlet) is infuriating. What value do membrane switches add?
What value do membrane switches add?
"sleek" "modern" "futuristic" "design"
Sounds like a call for a steady soldering hand.
I'm that close to do the same for my child's nightlight: just shunt power around whatever is opening the circuit and drive it with a Shelly plug.
(Okay the grand idea would be to ultimately put an ESP32 between the control unit and the three buttons, so that I can both operate it manually yet have full control of the thing; not the least because if you cut power it resets its state to a static white light. Never done that so that'd be nice way to acquire the skill without much risk to that super cheap device)
It’s antithesis of ‘sweet spot’ between dumb and smart.
Thing should either be dumb and do everything you want with a button, or smart and then at least you get programmability.
For simple things like lights it’s usually better use of time to buy Yeelight nightlight and then you get to control it through HomeKit:home assistant/their app.
> It’s antithesis of ‘sweet spot’ between dumb and smart.
You mean the soft buttons? yeah it's nuts, not the least because since it's reacting to an impulse (either pull down to mass or pull up from mass) there's gotta be a constant power draw - however small (my Shelly plug measures it as non-zero <0.1~0.5W) - to the logic board to compare it against.
(warning: back of the envelope calculation)
At scale on a house one would have a bunch of such soft button devices†, cumulatively it might be on the 1~5W scale. Across a 1M city it's going to be 1~5MW.
It's made worse by these devices having cheap transformers or switched mode power supplies whose non-linearity drive the power factor down to 0.5~0.7, which means it's pumping real energy production to 2~8MVA (plus on the utility side electrical hardware needs to be scaled up because e.g loss doubles)
Which means for my town we're basically throwing 50~200MVAh a day right down the drain - or rather either burned up in the air or buried down "places that are not of honour" - because it doesn't make sense to have power factor correction economically (either on the device maker side, which would rise the BOM a few cents up, on the residential side where the cost is prohibitive, or on the individual size where people prefer buying cheap, electrically terrible, knockoff devices). Because yeah, in the EU passive PFC - which raises PF ~0.5 to ~0.85 - is mandated above >75W only.
Comparatively to the overall energy production and usage it's small, but in absolute terms it boggles the mind that as a society we're able to handwave such amounts of energy.
† I'm not counting stuff like powerbanks or chargers but again back of the envelope it should overall fold into the range, making the worst case conservative.
Cheap and quite amenable to automated assembly.
membrane switches add value for the manufacturer, not the consumer. considerably cheaper than other solutions.
Eh, I guess I'll disagree.
Automations allow me to run the purifier at Medium/High speed for certain times a day, even when I am not around. Other than that, they are always on Auto - so they produce minimal noise.
However, certain times a day for period of 15-30 mins or so, they run at Medium/High so they can do certain number of air changes in a room of x SQFT.
Having a 'computer' also allows them to detect when a room suddenly becomes less 'sanitized' and ramp up the 'automatic' to an appropriate level.
Automating based on time has been possible for decades with a simple timer that switches the power for the device. Still no computer necessary. And at least my purifier thinks 100% of the time that the air is perfectly clean no matter what, so in auto mode it would never run anyway.
We are working on setting up Home Assistant to react to when we are home or not where I live. We do this based on mac adresses connected to wifi, and this is something that would not be possible without a computer in everything.
Note that this method isn't particularly reliable with cell phones since they regularly go into low power mode and disconnect from the network.
I can do that by just running them in an adjacent room at max for a few hours a day. Pretty simple. I've suffered from massive allergies all my life and hardly ever sneeze now. Getting rid of carpet and getting the air filters were all big quality of life increases. To each their own though. I can see why you might want to do that. I don't like running them when I'm not at home personally.
Indoor environment geeks run their own air purifiers put together from PC fans and oven filters. Apparently PC fans designed for it are much less noisy than the commercial alternatives, so you can run it on constant speed.
I've wanted to try building one myself, but unfortunately even the minimal woodworking required is a bit of a challenge for me.
What's the MRV of an oven filter? Is there another step on the ladder I'm not aware of?
From what I've seen the indoor climate geeks do recommend prioritizing throughput over filter rating, so they'd rather use a box fan with MERV 13 filters rather than HEPA (which is ~ MERV 17 I think?).
i used a cat litter box and a hot knife, once upon a time
There isn't any rational reason that an AC motor with a few resistors/potentiometer with a filter isn't the cheapest. DRM would involve DC power which means a transformer is required as well. Unless there was a good reason to have a DC motor, this wouldn't even be an issue for anyone who can combine a box fan with a filter.
I was building a DIY filter and took apart a purifier and was disappointed at it not having DC for me to connect my esp to for a sensor to check the purity.
“DRM” means “digital rights management” in this context; it has little to do with the choice of AC or DC power. What acronym did you interpret it as?
DRM as you used it. There is no DRM AFAIK that works on AC power. It needs binary and that needs at least a transformer.
I interpreted their point to mean; if the device doesn't have any DC voltages inside, it's not running transistors or micro-contollers; the D in DRM; i.e. "no smarts".
No smarts, means no DRM.
if you couldn't compete on price, consumers would be more discerning. especially for the things that cost the most, they'd favor the company that could sell trust and quality. I suspect this is why people remember the golden age of flight (cost a lot, airlines charge about the same) and appliances (both companies had about the same costs, and appliances cost a lot more).
I wouldn't call it DRM because there are no digital rights here to manage. I would rather call it electronic muzzle or lead
Easy - any institutional buyer will want this crap, so they know when to replace filters.
When did appliances stop coming with schematics?
These filters probably do really age out, though perhaps more slowly than the DRM
There is a mechanical filter that will be cleanable, but the HEPA filter works by having an injected electrostatic charge which will leak away over time, and the activated carbon will deactivate over time.
It would be interesting to know if there are statistics on how quickly those processes occur, and whether they are affected by volume of air or just elapsed time
> the HEPA filter works by having an injected electrostatic charge which will leak away over time
Nope, HEPA filters are not dependent on electrostatic effects and do not magically start leaking. When they are too loaded with dust, air has a harder time getting through, which is the main factor that causes them to need replacement.
They also get more efficient at filtering out PM the dirtier they are, not less.
I can't edit my comment any more, but on researching, I see you are correct. I thought I had read that HEPA used electret material like FFP3 filters, but most do not.
don't forget volume of dust
> There was nowhere in the app I could disable the warning, having cleaned the filter several times throughout the year I was sure it had at least another 12 months of life left in it. I decided to investigate the nightmare DRM RFID chip that was stuck to the bottom of my filter.
What's the point of having a warning of the life of the filter if OP ignores it? Why did it say it couldn't filter? If his house is dusty, and he cleaned it there's probably dust that isn't visible, he hacked the drm but he also looked for the "best air filter" and found this instead of a fan with some filters on it with no verification.
You don't just clean a filter and say I KNOW there is 12 months more.
> What's the point of having a warning of the life of the filter if OP ignores it? Why did it say it couldn't filter?
So you'll buy a replacement filter to make the warning go away, a filter you can't (easily) buy from anyone besides the original manufacturer since they DRMed it? Obviously HEPA filters do expire eventually, but there's a perverse incentive here for the warning to undershoot the actual useful life of the filter.
>but there's a perverse incentive here for the warning to undershoot the actual useful life of the filter
Hypothetically, yes, there's a perverse incentive, but is that what is actually happening?
A clogged filter can stress the fan motor which can A) increase power consumption and B)reduce overall product life.
It's not unlikely. A while ago I had to deal with a laser printer that automatically reported the end of the drum's life after 15000 pages or so, even if there were no signs of stripes on the printed pages. The solution was to stick a 220 ohm resistor on the electric contacts between the drum and the rest of the printer. The printer would sense the resistor (which is present on genuine new drums too) as a signal to reset the page counter. Once the resistor gives a puff of smoke it can be removed, and the old drum can be used until its true end of life.
What does it take to burn a resistor? It sounds terrible to me. Guess it was hot all the time?
Depends on the wattage/power rating of the resistor
It was a through-hole 1/4W resistor. It burnt in about 5 seconds as far as I remember.
> A clogged filter can stress the fan motor which can A) increase power consumption and B)reduce overall product life.
you got it completely backwards, unless you have a very fancy and expensive ECM motor.
Increasing resistance decreases power draw, as the fan needs to do less work. You can test this by hooking up a vaccum cleaner to a killawatt and blocking the intake.
There may be concerns about cooling the motor, but it really doesn't take that much air movement to dissipate heat.
And it is for the consumer to decide which path to take. Not the product itself.
Until the consumer complains that the air purifier isn't doing its job and thrashes the company online, and changes for a model from a competitors.
Most consumers aren't really capable of this type of nuance.
This sounds like a completely made up problem, I don’t think this ever happens.
A clogged filter is obviously full of dust and grime, anyone who can use a vacuum cleaner can understand that
All of these sort of things are just based on hours used. It's like looking at your hot water heater warranty and replacing it when it's over (I live an an area where the PPM of the water is rather high and hot water heater warranties are basically calibrated for water like mine, so we do have to replace them on warranty expiration, most places you at least get a few years or double)
> It's like looking at your hot water heater warranty and replacing it when it's over
Why would anyone do that? Seems like a waste of a hot water heater that probably has a lot of life left.
People that do this probably throw out food the moment it hits the best before date too.
Changing a hot water prematurely is probable less expensive than having one blow the bottom out and flood whatever area it is in. I don't have a basement, so my central unit and water heater share a utility closet in the hallway sharing a wall with a bedroom. It's a pretty bad design flaw, as during the summer of 110°+ temps, it is unnecessarily heating the house. IR temp shows that shared wall from the bedroom side over 90° radiating into that bedroom. </rant>
That's not so much a design failure of the house, as it is a heater that is not sufficiently insulated.
Maybe, but it's a rental, so only some much to be done about that. So much was defined by me as buying a $30 roll of insulating whatever it is that then got stapled to the interior wall of the closet. Took the thermal temp down 15° on the bedroom side of the wall.
also they make hybrid water heaters that will cool whatever space they are in while they heat the water using a heat pump on top
The whole device is a product and experience. He disabled the razor saying he couldn't use his razor blade. You're supposed touse it until it goes to zero and replace as instructed.
If you want a speaker you don't buy Sonos and say I turned off the drm, firmware and added a headphone jack.
If you want filtered air for cheap you buy a box fan with HEPA.
My unit shows particle count, it's pretty easy to see when the filter is doing its job.
This is what I expected. Then I'd love a writeup on hacking the sensor to check PPM or change the percentages or to tell you when to replace it.
If someone does their research, and still buys a proprietary system that sells you expensive filters and has drm, AND chooses to get this device they must have a really good reason or aren't very smart.
The filters being DRMd was not on my bingo card when I bought my unit. Maybe that was naïve of me. But also proprietary is all that's available here. (To be clear I'm not the author, I just have an air purifier from the same seller)
Oh I didn't mean you, I think your device would be an appropriate or ideal hacking target with the PPM. I was referring to the OP who supposedly did their research and bought it anyway. I thought you had a different device.
It's surprising that your device has the reading and it would have been a great read if it was hacked to display the air pressure to gauge the longevity. If it's a different model and you're interested maybe you can flash esphome on it.
> Why did it say it couldn't filter?
We don't know it said that - it could have been saying 'arbitrary number of seconds of use has elapsed/. You could be right, but we don't know.
Xiaomi air purifiers do exactly that. Go by hours used.
At least in the older Version 3 that was still the case.
Apparently people still buy them, because they are cheap. It's the same with printers - the initial purchase price is low, then the consumables are expensive.
People really need to include the running costs into their calculations. The best deals aren't usually the cheapest machines.
Air purifiers do not filter dust and should never be bought for that purpose.
> You don't just clean a filter and say I KNOW there is 12 months more.
You do, I have been using two for about 6 years, and you can easily get at least 3-4× runtime out of authentic filters. I refer to external particulate matter sensors and ignore whatever the purifiers themselves are showing. You can also easily clean the filter with hot water, it removes any smells and has no effect on its purifying performance (again, using a couple of external sensors as reference).
Are you using HEPA filters? Which ones? What do yours filter if not dust and how do you clean them? I have some that are washable but none of them are HEPA.
> Air purifiers do not filter dust and should never be bought for that purpose.
What? What do you call the particles it filters, if not dust?
Of course you can do with a prefilter which filters out larger dust particles so they don't clog your finer filter. But most air purifiers come with that from what I've seen.
Because he is supposed to be in control. It's fine for the software to warn him of things. It's not fine for the software to enforce filter changing policy as if it was his boss. He can ignore and dismiss the warning if he wants, simply because he's the human and the machine is supposed to bend over backwards to conform to his will. There really is no need for any further justification.
> You don't just clean a filter and say I KNOW there is 12 months more.
Yes, you definitively do.
I am located in a defacto dust free location, but I use an air purifier to keep my pollen allergy under control when spring arives: This shitty DRM is telling me to change filters after X hours, because it ASSUMES it is clogged, even though it has no idea of the reality? No idea if the air is like in New Delhi or like in the north of Sweden?
Hell no! Thank you, but I can decide that on my own.
Did you buy the device? If your home is indeed "dust free" you wouldn't need this filter (and cleaning it won't clear the small things you probably want to filter, water also damages the filter). If you're using HEPA you can't tell their life just from the way they look.
If you could do that all and still chose to buy the device with drm, locked hours and a proprietary fan with filter there is flawed logic way before you bought the device. Even going forward a box fan and filter is cheaper and better.
Yes, I own three of those but an earlier version (2) that comes without RFID sensor. And I use the filter waaaaay longer than the device wants me to. This DRM is just milking money out of the consumer and producing waste, nothing else.
My eyes can probably not tell if the filter is over its lifespan, but my pollen allergy definetly can tell if it still works.
They makes sense. Have you considered using another filter? A box fan with a hepa filter or one that has appropriate sized holes may even work better for pollen and also be washable by default. Did you want the smarts in it if any? I'm hooking a plantower sensor to a purifier or you can use the Ikea air quality detector to smart trigger it. https://esphome.io/components/sensor/pm1006.html
> What's the point of having a warning of the life of the filter if OP ignores it?
Never buy a laser printer or photocopier. They'll tell you the toner needs replacing months before it actually does.
Fortunately toner is pretty easy to evaluate for yourself. And my Brother printer doesn't stop working when the low-toner warning kicks in. It also clearly shows that it's hardcoded to kick in at 1/3 capacity, they make no attempt to hide it. So I just buy a new one at that point, but I don't install it until the old one actually starts to visibly fail.
HEPA filter life is a little harder to evaluate using basic human senses.
great, so we can't use ink jet because of their shenanigans, and now you're saying don't buy laser or photocopier. so how to i put ink on dead trees?
Keep Up the Good Work. I used to think ICs would grant the individuals in society more and more power, that could hopefully be leveraged to do some good (for a broad enough and sufficiently universal definition of good). What a shame to see that people use these ICs and exploit expected knowledge asymmetry to limit functionality.
There's so much potential in DIY. It's a real shame that market promotes solutions as it does. The asymmetry of knowledge, that is, keeping important details from the buyer/user needs to be dealt with one way or another.
There's people born every day that don't know anything. Some would rather exploit that rather than facilitate openness and creativity.
The fact we HAVE to buy into stuff where we can't buy 3rd party replacements should be illegal. It should fall under the category of right to repair. The purifier can't function without a filter from the manufacturer.
well, repeal the dmca
repeal capitalism
we tried that
it killed a quarter of a billion people
do not recommend
how many people die because of capitalism every year? fossil fuel emissions alone are around 9 million a year, much of which wouldn't exist if not for capitalist pressures
also your claim and source are ridiculous. you can't blame something like a famine on a non-capitalist governance because famines can happen in capitalism just the same
sometimes it's hard to distinguish 'because of capitalism' from 'because of industrialization' and 'because of humans', but fossil-fuel-emissions deaths under communist regimes seem to have been higher than under capitalism (because of worse pollution controls, which was in turn because of less accountable governments), which strongly suggests that they're not due to capitalism but due to industrialization
but we know that industrialization generally results in a dramatic increase in life expectancy at birth, not a decrease. not much of a comfort if you're dying of mesothelioma from the combination of smoking (also historically higher in the non-capitalist parts of the industrialized world) and working with asbestos in a factory, which is pretty directly caused by industrialization, but i think it's reasonable to weigh diffuse, probabilistic risks against each other. for example, dying of an infected wound that wasn't treated properly because of inadequate resources, versus dying of an asthma attack aggravated by industrial nitrogen oxide emissions
with respect to famines, my claim and source are extremely thoroughly documented, and it is obviously correct to blame famines on non-democratic governance. there may have been historical famines that were not caused by government oppression, but simply due to population reaching the carrying capacity of the existing arable land with the available farming practices. but that hasn't happened since the advent of capitalism, because agricultural productivity has grown more rapidly than population
consequently there has never been a famine in a country whose economy was organized along capitalist lines (from wikipedia: an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit, whose central characteristics include capital accumulation, competitive markets, price systems, private property, property rights recognition, voluntary exchange, and wage labor)
democratic non-capitalism is certainly possible — i live in a non-capitalist democratic country that is struggling to return to capitalism, and we have never had a famine, though during the dictatorships we came close — but in practice nobody has ever succeeded in 'repealing' capitalism democratically, which is to say, eliminating it through government fiat. here our historical loss of capitalism was accompanied by a historical loss of democracy
if we want to steelman the 'deaths from capitalism' claim, we could focus on access to healthcare, which is generally better under socialist governments than in capitalist systems (though the usa for some reason runs its healthcare under a weird socialism/capitalism hybrid that gives the worst of both worlds). historically, for example, communist cuba had better health than the much richer and more industrialized usa. but other countries with actually capitalist healthcare systems such as switzerland, germany, sweden, and japan always exceeded both, because they were richer than cuba (due to capitalism) and did healthcare worse than cuba but better than the usa (again, due to capitalism). and of course the non-communist alternatives to capitalism, such as corporatism and medieval-style guild production (sadly still dominant in many countries) fare even worse by these measures
still, capitalism does produce obvious shortfalls in healthcare access, and hypothetical alternatives to capitalism that haven't been tried yet could certainly do much better
thanks for thoughtful reply
billionaires constantly complain about overpopulation
and some complain about underpopulation
either a bunch of people die or a bunch get poor and either way one half of these complaints goes away
if even the winners of the game want it repealed why not
it could be fun
and it worked for the ussr, with only a loss of a few million lives and the gain of millions
this is also true for china
net gain for communist china in citizens
also please start a site with an rss feed collecting kragen notes releases
semantic kragen-web 2.0
causing new people to be born doesn't cancel out mass murder from a moral perspective or from the perspective of what kind of future the people now alive are likely to find fun
you can git clone http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/pavnotes2.git and run git pull every half hour if you want. a git pull when there are no updates involves two http transactions sending a total of 486 bytes, it's a lot more lightweight than an rss fetch
Looking forward to future articles such of "Breaking Free from DRM: Hacking Air."
Indeed, companies definitely need to figure this out. People are pirating air all over the place!
Breathing air that was cleaned by someone's intellectual property (without a royalty payment and code to ensure their lungs only process it according to the license) is theft. Unless we DRM it, the incentive to clean the air will be gone and nobody will do it!
Why?
A glut of complicated smart devices connected to simple electronics such as motors and lights are easily rerouted to another IC.
Thanks, this is great news!
I have the same unit, except an older one, which doesn't really cause problems (it just displays the 0% for a few seconds when turning on). But the newer models do have this issue.
I basically replace mine once per year even though Xiaomi considers it to have a service life of about 6 months when running 24/7 as it does here. I run it at a pretty low speed because it's too noisy otherwise but they don't seem to take this into account when calculating the lifespan. When the hayfever season starts, I put in a fresh one to get maximum benefit. But it's nice to be able to reset this.
PS: I didn't "see" the tag on my last filter with my phone, I thought it was a different type with a different frequency. Guess I'm wrong.
In fairness, this looks more like a user interface bug than a DRM mechanism. The fan runs regardless of whether the warning light is on.
It's a bit suspicious that older models only showed the warning at power on and they changed it to be more annoying. It's possible that the change was malicious (an intentional dark pattern).
Doesn't the filter fill up well before 12 months?
Looks like it is 3 stages ("primary", "high-efficiency", and "activated carbon"). https://www.mi.com/global/product/xiaomi-smart-air-purifier-...
I keep a low-dust apartment, and my 2 Levoit air purifier HEPA filters get changed every 3 months (sooner, if there was an unusual incident). The white of the HEPA material is sometimes visibly gray after 3 months, even though I vacuum the first stage surface every 1-3 weeks.
They’re designed for dirty environments so I’ve found the usage estimates feel quite short for contexts that have relatively clean air. Seems to be calculated purely by air volume rather than actual dirt
I have 2 xiaomis (work great btw) and 3 extra filters we are just cleaning and rotating the filters, and replacing after a few rotations. They seem to forget that they already knew a filter after a few changes, plus they also work with 'empty' filters, just a warning on the first start.
Obviously they aren't as new, but they still work very well.
personally i would have just taped over the light
I bought a handful of those stickers. Neat to have a way to get around it though.
Imported Xiaomi filters are annoyingly expensive though
Longtime Winix user here, but this is a fantastic write-up. I’m sure the NFC stuff will come in handy one day.
I've seen a lot of people getting Xiaomi air purifiers. Had no idea they put DRM on the filters, and they cost more. Really glad I went with Winix years ago, cheaper filters that last longer, and no DRM. I don't get why people can't just put a reminder in a calendar in the future to let them know to replace the filter instead of dealing with this stuff.
Someone thought adding DRM to an air purifier was a Top Priority, and got it implemented. IMO any form of planned obsolescence is a subset of enshittification, not just Doctorow's step-by-step lock-in tactics.
This is awesome! Frustrating they'd DRM lock the air purifier but looks like a fun hack :)
They shouldn’t have bought an air purifier with DRM to begin with. That is the real problem.
"I had set my unit up to disable the LCD" - how did you do this?
There's an option in the Xiaomi Home app. Three dot menu -> Screen brightness.
That's what I thought it might have been. Tried there and through Home Assistant. Neither worked. It's weird that the bottom "buttons" on the unit itself work and light up and the colour indicator works but not the "top" panel (still in the round circle). Was wondering if I or someone else has hit the wrong button at one point but I think it might just have broken. Not a massive deal can still monitor in app and HA.
Or, you know, put a piece of paper on it to block the LCD.
Also, I thought air purifier filters aren't 'cleanable'. Like, you can't just hoover them.
Even if not cleanable, the machine isn't going to actually know if they need to be replaced or not. It will depend on how dirty the air was and how much stuff got filtered out. Normal air purifiers would have a reset option to reset the timer.
>the machine isn't going to actually know if they need to be replaced or not
The machine can know if it measures differential pressure across the filter. If the DP across the filter is too high (indicating a clogged filter), the filter needs to be replaced.
I know for a fact that my Levoit unit isn't that sophisticated because when it asks you to replace the filter there's simply a button which resets the filter life back to 100% that you're supposed to press after changing it - if it were actually doing anything clever to determine the state of the filter then you wouldn't have to tell it that it's been replaced, it would be able to tell on its own. I suspect it's nothing more than a timer which triggers the warning after running for some hardcoded number of hours.
Can this machine know that?
A machine could, but is this machine sophisticated enough to do that? Why do we play around with hypotethical scenarious where this warning message on another device might not be shitty DRM?
Are you stating that this specific machine actually does this, or are you just theorycrafting that a hypothetical machine could do this?
I just went through the product’s FCC certification photos which gives you nice pictures of the product internals.
AFAICT, there were no readily obvious DP sensors to be found.
Indeed, but the OP says he's cleaned it several times, so it "should be good". What I'm saying is that you're not supposed to clean them.
Perhaps, but that's the owner's decision to make.
I mean, I guess? But that's just a thought-terminating cliche. You're not supposed to clean the filters because that's not how it works.
There's usually a pre-filter on the outside which stops larger particles from entering the actual HEPA filter, and you can clean that at least.
Yes, certainly, but the OP describes it as a replace filter warning, which is usually for the actual filter.
OK nice work, but seriously, why not just hotwire the blower motor directly from DC + and - and bypass all the DRM chips entirely? That way you'll never have to deal with it again.
If you do that, you'll lose other features, like "auto" mode where it varies the fan speed depending on the amount of particles in the air, or the ability to control it remotely. On lower fan speeds it's essentially silent.
Some people don't want the best solution. It doesn't work as well for a writeup either.
This is by far the most direct and least work solution.
Bloody good work!
We need a logo that combines a poop emoji overlaid with the red circle with a line through it. This will mean "No Enshitification"
Edit: prohibited is U+1F6AB So place this over U+1F4A9 That is the logo! Is there a way to specify combinations of characters in unicode?