Perhaps gas is an imperfect analogy.
How about licence fees (road tax, licence plate tags, whatever)? Without paying those you can’t use your car on the road (well, you can but you might be fined or have it impounded).
You can still use your car on private property so nobody has taken that ability away from you but if you want to use it on public roads you need to pay.
I personally don’t like ads. You’ve already mentioned it, but I also feel it removes value from the service. Subscriptions also keep companies more accountable and force quality and development, not that you need it. Ads just lower quality which in return create competitors. Depending on service/product could be easier to evaluate things using Subscriptions. Long term Subscriptions. Imo. Loyalty/Rewards in conjunction with Subscriptions give people incentive to stay Subscribed whilst not needing/using specific services, but that’s another topic.
I dislike subscriptions, for most of the stated reasons above
But I can live with them sometimes
I think the principal is the idea of paying a subscription for something that is part of your body
Imagine paying a new liver subscription,
Granted the medical bills are sort of that, but it’s a different framing and changes the perception dramatically
I don’t think I’ll ever partake of a subscription for something subdermal, be it 10 dollars or 10 cents a month
I did make an exception for pure wrist, but that was only because I felt it was a temporary measure and it wasn’t going to stay In my body long term
I am in agreement with @Zwack, I don’t necessarily hate ads but I despise how they are used which is why I use an ad blocker most of the time. News sites are most common for this where they are so packed with ads it becomes nearly impossible to read whatever drivel they posted. As someone that sometimes has issues with concentration It is very disruptive to have moving, flashy ads, or ads that conveniently pop up in the middle of reading an article, losing your place, and having to find it and continue on. A good counter example of this is hackaday.com. Take a look at this random article I grabbed it has a whopping total of 3 ads that are placed reasonably. I’m fine with disabling my ad blocker for hackaday. They not only keep it reasonable but they also have good articles that are interesting to read.
Non-invasive ads are fine sometimes.
There is a middle ground that can be taken here. The way I see it is that any product that does not require cloud services to perform a basic function should not connect to cloud services for said function. I think a good example of this is a light switch. A light switch serves a basic function. To turn on or off a light or appliance. The function of the light switch could be expanded by adding in automation services like z-wave or zigbee which in turn could communicate with a local automation system for completing more complicated functions that the switch by itself is not capable of. Further from that it can be connected to cloud based services for even more expanded functions such as being able to turn on and off the light from anywhere in the world. This example provides a 3 tier system with expanded costs and pros/cons associated with each. Me personally, I would never go for number 3 based on personal preference but the second could be very useful for a variety of reasons. The benefit of this is that if at any point the cloud services go down the automation still works. If the automation system goes down the light switch still turns on and off the lights.
It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing thing. 
We can have fancier services that cost money to use and still be able to have a device that will perform its base function without the service.
My take on all of this is that Vivokey needs to pick a direction in which to move and they can pivot from that. This is the first stab at a new and improved platform. The consideration is that it should not bleed money. How exactly that happens is totally up for debate but I 100% trust Amal et al to do what’s right by the community. But there’s no way to make everyone happy and choosing a way to start it better than trying account for everything and going no where.
VSP is Vision Service Plan, a national vision insurance company. They have the acronym trademarked as their logo. I wouldn’t use it to avoid confusion.
I agree, non-intrusive ads are tasteful (such as banner and sidebar), even video ads are fine if I get to choose when to play them and they give an additional minor benefit (such as games), and if I enjoy a service/product enough then I’ll pay the one-time price to get rid of them. If it’s a sub to remove them, I’ll pay if it’s something I know about going into it, use it regularly, and deem it worth it. But for some I’ll happily click “Play Ad” (muted) several dozen times while doing some other activity, because in the end I get the benefit I wanted and the creator gets paid. On the other hand, pop-ups and video ads that roll over and over without a choice to view them when I choose to? Those will quickly put that app or service on my shit list.
I’ll clarify. I hate services who change their model and force a sunk-cost decision. If I make a fully-informed choice to buy something, be it a product or service, I want to know every detail of what I’m receiving and whats included. Anything that remotely smacks of a company changing their offerings, especially when it’s a fundamental shift in costs, subscriptions, or microtransactions, is a cause for suspicion from me. I know that’s not specifically what’s happening here, as you’re discussing entirely new offerings in addition to what the Vivokey lineup already has…
With this single caveat.
But still, that’s an explanation of my gut reaction. I don’t trust companies who shift the foundation below a contract (implicit or otherwise) that I’ve formed with them. I want to soak in all information about the product or services, let it percolate, and make a confident choice to engage with them. The choice to stay after they make changes, while already being with them, is compromised by the time and money already spent using the service and often feels like a betrayal. I can’t tell you how many games did that to me growing up. Microtransactions need to die in digital hellfire.
What would it take for you to not feel betrayed? Some services remaining free? A Vivokey url redirect? A Vivokey spark validity checker?
If the current API continued to work for Spark and Spark2 only would you be OK with that?
Given that Vivokey are trying to work out how best to provide services, develop new stuff and feed staff it would be good if we could provide constructive advice.
In my case I would be willing to pay a subscription for a password manager, and SAML or OAUTH2 services to begin with.
Beyond that I don’t know at the moment.
I don’t mind ads if they don’t get in the way. Subscriptions I avoid like the plague unless it’s a 1 time payment, lifetime subscription. There are a bunch of services I want to use but refuse to because of the subscriptions. When I buy something fairly expensive I prefer it not to have an additional monthly bill. When the subscription isn’t paid then the service stops and the item becomes useless. If I stop paying my car insurance then I can no longer legally drive my car making my car useless. That doesn’t bother me because the car isn’t attached to me. I would prefer the tech inside my body to always work regardless of my financial situation. A car is almost a necessity so a car subscription (insurance) is unavoidable. If this device wasn’t in my body then it wouldn’t bother me but once it becomes a part of me I don’t want it to be “useless” for any period of time
In the case of the chip implants they still work as chip implants whether you pay for additional services or not.
The question is would you pay a service fee to keep the additional infrastructure for additional services running? Let’s call it a monthly service fee because it is paying for additional services rather than a subscription to use to your chip because it is not for the basic use.
I personally avoid all subscriptions and would not be open to a subscription plan
I was describing the framework and backstory of my initial reaction along with more generalized examples. Amal did help frame things a bit better with his replies.
I’d say that passwordless login, 2FA, and a password manager would be a worthwhile service to subscribe to. If any of those features cost more though, like the passwordless Google account, I don’t see that as worth paying much extra for. It’s literally just my login to other services, and only the ones who allow “login by Google” at that. Nothing for the other 150+ logins I keep in my password manager that don’t have that feature. Knowing just how many of those I have, the password manager being cryptobiologically secured would be awesome, so long as it has the same autofill and cross-device capabilities I’m used to. 2FA in comparison I only have on a dozen or so accounts, and while it’d be nice to have, is generally only used for a first login from a new device. I suppose locking Google Authenticator behind Vivokey would be useful, but I don’t know if that’s automatic with Enterprise/what Amal’s going for.
Otherwise the only things that’d be nice about the Spark/Apex is if they can do what another high frequency chip could do but better. So if they could unlock doors, start cars, login to computer, and make payments, all cryptobiologically secured. But if each and every different thing is now a separate feature, then I see them as being marketed as add-ons and used to justify higher and higher prices.
I just want the Future in the palm of my hand, is that too much to ask?? /s [insert “Position 0 isn’t technically in the palm” joke here]
No problem with fair prices for offerings from Vivokey, but I wouldn’t want to have to buy a ‘bundle’ if i only want one service.
For example if Vivokey Vault was the same price as Bitwarden or LastPass is, then I’d move across happily (accepting that the cost premium is in the hardware and not the software). If it was more expensive to use per month also then I’d be less inclined.
By the same token, paying for 4 services to get access to the 1 i want doesn’t make sense, so if the base subscription doesn’t offer value keeping that in mind I’d hope that individual services are available.
I’ve always been supportive of vivokey but I really have doupts on this one…
Even ignoring the ads vs subscription debate there are still some concerning things, ( for a post-poc google workspace account through vivokey, which is probably the main feature I would be interested in) :
First being, I already have a google account, with a million important things related to it. So unless there is a 1 step way to “upgrade” that account to a vivokey managed one I definitely not in. Even if there are convoluted ways of transferring stuff from one account to another… there’s just too much stuff (passwords, cloud storage, accounts, browsing hystories, search history, preferences, youtube channels…).
The second point is what if I use this new account for years and at some point something happens to vivokey and everything is shut down? Do I keep my account? Can I transfer back to a standard one as if nothing ever happened? Who guarantees that? I trust Google to not disappear in a day but Vivokey…? (No offense amal, purely based on company scale)
The last thing is… services ? That’s vague. Loging into websites and identification are the main things and integrating google in that is BIG step forward but what’s the rest about? You mentioned calendaring and messaging I think but these are services that are directly redundant of google services so what’s the benefit?
Otherwise you are always super clear about your intentions and open to feedback so GGs for that and I can’t wait to see new usecases for my spark and future vivokeys (yes I’m hyped about this despite complaining a lot 
).
PS: I would participate in the poc but I don’t see what I would do with a temporary google account other than have fun scanning my spark a couple times 
Apoyo este comentario, perfectamente lo pensaré y lo más probable esque devuelva mi paquete antes de abrirlo. No me instalaré un chip para pagar suscripción. 
Sign in with Google, many sites allow editing 3rd party logins later, so you can just use that for a while and it doesn’t matter it’s temporary, cuz you still have your old means of accessing the accounts.
Sorry to pester here, but the central question for most of us hasn’t been addressed that I have seen as yet:
Is there a plan, or is it even POSSIBLE to painlessly (or as little as possible, outside of the implant itself and the sunk costs) allow users to decouple from the eventual product? Is it too early to ask how you envision that working, or would that be more determined by the final form of the product?
From what I can tell it does sound like a Google account or similar (365, etc) would be required to enable the service, and they’re not usually friendly to migrating data/accounts.
To be frank, having experienced joblessness and even more dire economic circumstances, it’d be lovely if I wasn’t losing access to my life while losing my livelihood. It’d be awesome if there was some system that allowed it to be spun out to a separate Google account that simply lost Vivokey support or something.
You know, as I think about this, I think my disdain for subscriptions is purely a psychological one. I really despise it for software and it bleeds over to other things. Aside from the fact that multiple subscriptions can start adding up to a lot, It’s simply the fact that in my head, I want to do my research and make the one time investment for a product that will last me years and years to come.
In the software (SaaS) realm, I want to buy a package once and use it for as long as it serves my purpose. I don’t want to have to continually make payments for new features that I don’t want. If there is a bug, I shouldn’t have to pay to get it fixed.
My thought is slightly different when it comes to services. Whether I go for one or not is purely a subjective analysis of the value. I pay $50 a year for Lucidchart. I think that is a reasonable amount for the utility I get out of it. Recently google wants to move my grandfathered free Workspace accounts to paid accounts at $72 a year per user. My parents that are on a custom family domain in one of these legacy accounts certainly don’t want to pay that much. To me that is not worth it. Half that and I would consider it.
But when you mix making an investment in hardware that relies on third party services, I am super weary. I wanted a home power monitoring system and I just couldn’t get behind any of the commercial ones because they either had subscriptions or relied on their servers. I ended up spending more than I would have with a commercial unit, plus a lot of time, to get a completely self-hosted setup. Well worth it to me.
Since I’ve gone completely off the deep end, to bring it back around, I think we’d need to understand what the final service(s) would look like and how much it would be. I think there was some sticker shock for this PoC. Hopefully you get some takers but it’s a tough sell for a temporary account. I wouldn’t want to use it to sign up for anything so not sure how useful a PoC it would be.
Fully agree with that. I used some yoga-app for quite a while, and I actually liked it a lot - it wasn’t one of those fitness-heavy things with jumping people, but rather a bit more calm, slightly hippie-esque one. I finally, after using the free variant for some months, decided to actually buy it - and since I’m no fan of subsciptions, I chose the pay-once-get-all payment method (which was cheaper if I wanted to use the app for some more months anyways).
Guess what? After some more months, the app got an “upgrade”. All the older videos were gone, and instead it was “modernized” - thanks for nothing, now it was just the usual generic fitness app full of blonde-haired “fit” girls who shout at me for “just one more move” and such bullshit.
So the thing is, there is just no guarantee nowadays that the product you decide to buy stays the product you wanted to buy. And yes, gaming has many sad examples of that as well…
Plus, yeah, paying a subscription to use something that’s actually literally a part of your body doesn’t feel right as well - reminds me of those cyberpunk settings where you have to regularly pay for your augmented eyes to keep seeing and all that.
Same. But I think at that point there might be changes in society. There are people today who have prosthetics with electronics in them. If the device becomes ‘non-functional’ then the government might provide some kind of welfare to assist with replacing or fixing the prosthetic, because it’s considered a basic level of body autonomy. I can imagine regulations in place that would require optics to still be able to pass through basic light signalling, but might not have augmented reality without the subscription.
There’s also Neuralink working on the brain interfaces, and I remember well Elon laughing that they need to be extremely careful with firmware updates. I think it’s reasonable to expect that stuff like that would have a basic level of functionality at all times, and it’s something that will become regulated and enforced.
As for the change to VivoKey, I’m interested. I want to know what other functionality I can expect from an Apex Ring or Flex or Mega. I still can’t decide which to go for, but considering that we can and likely will lose the ring it’s probably not the best option for us. A subscription is a snag in the plan, but I feel at least somewhat worth it, depending on what services I’m paying for. A subscription makes way more sense, and it sounds like a good implementation.
I like the sound of the test program, and I’m excited for the google functionality.
Just putting in my opinion here as a consumer of biohacking products. For my uses the spark never did anything I wanted that I couldn’t do with my NExT. It had a UID I could use for access control, and the profile link never really appealed to me because I could just put a custom URL on my NExT.
Adding these options even as subscriptions is going to be the deciding factor and now I’m getting a Spark. I want that additional functionality, especially as it continues to grow. I understand that I may lapse in payments or even stop using the services entirely, and then my implant “loses” utility while it’s still a part of my body. It still does all the basic functions we expect from our current NFC implants though. The only things I could lose are things I never previously had.
I’ve come to terms with subscription models in some settings. It costs to make and maintain software and services. I’m just selective about which ones I use. If this one could replace others for me, the price may make sense and the convenience would be worth it. If it ends up not being worth it then worst case we’re back where we started with an NFC implant.
EDIT: I had another thought I wanted to add. I’m down for subscriptions for third party services or even first party services that vivokey builds and maintains. The spark doesn’t have those functionalities built in, it just plugs into them. Where I would have an issue would be in an arena like health data where the hardware is permanently within the device, but you put a paywall up in order to unlock the device and get that functionality. That’s why I’m not a fan of the way Dsruptive is running their temperature sensor program it’s like holding the consumer hostage. I would want at least a basic level of functionality that is always available offline without fees because the hardware is there. If Amal or anyone else suggested moving to that model for sensor implants I would push back hard. Only the external online components of the implant should be fee based because they cost.