One of the most evil recent developments in the consumer technology industry, which has been plaguing certain products for quite some years now, is the phenomenon of a company selling some kind of electronic household "smart" product, initially with completely unlimited access, and then later uploading a firmware update to the device (often without user consent and full knowledge of what the update is going to do) that locks some features of the device behind a paywall. It is, for all intents and purposes, ransomware: Locking the user out of some features of the device and demanding money to unlock it (and usually not just a one-time payment, but a regular subscription). It's bad and questionable enough if electronic devices have this kind of limitation from the get-go, since purchase. It's a million times more indefensible if the limitations are only pushed onto the device later, long after purchase. There are many infamous examples of this. And, apparently, this is ...