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Software that had a data moat because it was hard to integrate with or migrate off of will have that moat disappear. A web site is a client now. Building data migration too for all of you competitors is easier now.
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I've just had a SaaS that I use decide to implement a 2.4x price increase. I reacted instead by taking screenshots of every page of the SaaS, downloading their API docs, exporting what data I could, and asking Claude to build a self-hosted clone based just on those files. I had a read-only version of my entire data history completed in a single evening. Even at Opus API rates, it cost me less than half the price of a single annual seat.
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Heh and without api docs, just copy and paste the urls from network traffic and Claude will write a library for you.
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One of the many SaaS products we use at Day Job chose to gatekeep its MCP behind an enterprise plan. A brief Claude Code session later and a better, more feature-full MCP than the official was reverse-engineered from internal APIs by Opus.
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Right now, software is protected by the attacker not having enough competence. If that's over, the logical next step is using real encryption.

E.g. a synth has a public key embedded. To change settings, you upload them to the vendor, who blesses them with their private key.

Hacking such a synth requires either jailbreaking the synth, or the vendor losing their key . Both can be mitigated with tamper resistant hardware.

We're well ahead on this path already, I assume AI will accellerate it. This is very bad news for the right to repair.

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But everything you described was basically a byproduct of incompetence somehow no? On both side. That's why the right to repair and how local HW should be treated when the online counterpart is EOLed by the manufacturer should be mandated by law. A law that stands on the side of the citizen, the end-user, obviously.
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I would not describe it as incompetence, more as

1) current encryption not available in the 1990's. These are the age of DES and weapon-grade vs commercial encryption. There was a legal cost blocking strong encryption.

2) Manufacturers were not as strongly opposed to people touching the internals. After WW2, most people could fix anything, because survival depended on it. Even in the 60's radios etc. came with schematics, and building your own was normal and cost-effective. The shift happened in the '90s, with governements requiring licensing for everything, and mass manufacturing making repair less cost effective than buying a new one.

Our current culture where only people blessed by the manufacturer are allowed to do anything is very recent.

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(Reads:) "But, but...but... but everything... you described ...basically seem to be somehow a byproduct of incompetence...no"

[trying-to-generate-random-making-sense-content]

Let me gasps ask: The older six-fingers-"AI"-characters had learned an music-instrument by now, ander are much more capable of playing music you otherwise haddn't known or thought about..."?

um What about those early shadowy boygroup, whom seem asian, no ? (-;

[after-losing-entry-address-of-topic-question]

But back to your trustworth-written text, Yes!

regards,

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