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Comment by motbus3 | Hacker News Reader

Years ago I would think I was being paranoid to think they would patch hardware retroactively to make it slower so you need to pay more to use your own hardware. In 2026, I think this is what all car companies are doing after you pay the full car price. I don't see a reason why they wouldn't do it with so little competition

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It smells like something IBM would do. Coming from small computers where you own it, I was flabbergasted to learn that IBM would ship additional processors and ram with their mainframes but you were not allowed to use them until you paid the additional license fee.

So it is something that has been done for a long time now. Still feels like unethical rent-seeking that should not be tolerated by the customer.

See Also: car companies that charge additional fees for hardware already on the car. Additional services, I sort of understand(remote start via cell network), but stuff like heated seats, that is just wrong.

Isn't this something apple has been in legal trouble over?

Yep, "Batterygate"

https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/936268845/apple-agrees-to-pay...

Tesla does the same and I am not sure but someone told me Chevrolet and Audi have same "solutions" in place

> See Also: car companies that charge additional fees for hardware already on the car. Additional services, I sort of understand(remote start via cell network), but stuff like heated seats, that is just wrong.

It saves the car manufacturer on logistics cost. The per-unit cost of a seat heater is (much) smaller than the cost related to keeping two variants of seat in stock and to provide spare parts. Say the heating mat costs 100€ per seat including materials and installation, and can be sold to the customer for 400€ permanent, that means as long as 1 in 4 customers buys the seat heating option, the books are balanced, and all money you save on logistics is pure profit.

Adding subscription on top of that is financially even better, if there is one thing companies LOVE thanks to stonk market incentives it is monthly recurring revenue.

You are absolutely right! (Couldn't resist the ai pun)

I think more than that, it is probably a lie they tell us that you are not paying for the hardware/equipment.

It's slimy as hell, A person buys a thing, they now own it. However there is a locked box, with no key. The manufacture sells the key to this box for an additional fee. To unlock a thing they already own.

Yeah, Nothing morally wrong there.

Databases licencing per core is the most ridiculous thing I've heard for me. In this case they have zero marginal cost and still charge you for it. Hilarious.

> In this case they have zero marginal cost and still charge you for it.

A license has zero marginal cost in the first place. Software distribution over networks have a negligible marginal cost. An ebook as zero margin cost. We are constantly paying lots of things with zero or negligible marginal cost.

These deals aren't as slimy as they look. Yes, there's no marginal cost, but the goal is to spread out the costs as evenly as possible with the companies using the software. Setting the price per core just means that the companies that might do more processing shoulder more of the software cost. (And, yes, it's another way to gouge companies. But it's gouging based on use.)

Not necessarily slimy. The problem is that there is no clear right pricing where there is no marginal cost - makes it hard to decide whether the pricing if fair or not.

It is a case of pricing based on the value provided, not the cost of the goods. Same way we are always told to price ourselves as developers really.

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