I hate that everything now is a subscription service instead of buying it and do whatever you want.
Other than the recent nonsense, this is why I cancelled Netflix and went back to pirating. Content leaves unexpectedly? Not on my Nas.
I’ve taken to de-DRMing any e-books I bought from Amazon for that reason.
Also, the “You can only view this book on 3 devices” – yeah … fuck off.
Calibre + DeDRM plugin + KFX plugin. Perfectly legal too, as long as you aren’t distributing them.
Btw, did you know of Weightless Books and Smashwords?
They may not have as many ebooks as Amazon, but they do offer DRM free ebooks, and may be worth keeping in mind to check before going straight to Amazon.
Thanks. I had a collection from several years ago of Amazon books, though these days it’s my absolute last choice for anything.
This is the way.
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Why I went to DVDs. There is libre software to rip them and depending on country it’s legal, so basically you get a DRM-free legal copy with ability to archive or lend to a friend.
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I’ve been buying preowned DVDs off ebay every few weeks or so for the last year. I don’t even bother looking to see if they are available to stream anymore.
Probably cheaper too
But then it’s in DVD quality. Why not just pirate a full quality version?
Blurays exist and they’re pretty cheap from thrift stores (often just $3)
Piracy is free though
Ya but Blu-ray is a PITA to rip sometimes.
This. My only media expense monthly is my VPN at $10. Everything is pirated.
Even that though - I just download only my favorites for the collection. Everything else is available on stand alone websites these days (multiple) so if you’re paying for a streaming service or really even using bittorrent then you’re living in the past as far as movies go.
What should I be using instead of (q)bittorrent?
QBitTorrent is fine. BitTorrent and its children are not.
It’s really good quality. In my opinion low resolution only matters in static images or when video is paused, I’ll take high bitrate and superior sound every day instead of today’s streaming.
Sure you can just download, super convinient and gives best results. But sometimes it’s good to do things the way that can scale in society or just actually own something you like :).
DVD isn’t very good quality. I don’t really care and I have a tiny TV, and DVDs still don’t look very good on it.
The video quality is shit and it’s extremely obvious in my opinion. Even the sound is inferior to a good torrent with Dolby TrueHD/DTS HD sound.
What software would that happen to be, supposing it’s not MakeMKV?
Plain VLC can do it. You may need to at least install libdvdcss and libdvdread packages, they are 100% open source and easy to obtain, but you need to read the guide for specific OS because some system distribution repositories does not ship them by default for legal reasons in a few countries.
I’m pretty sure handbrake can rip as well as re-encode.
Content leaves unexpectedly? Not on my Nas.
Except when I accidentally rm -rf the media folder but shhhhhhhh
Old school pirating or new school? Last time I remember pirates was like… Napster, Limewire, Kazaa… Then went to TPB before it got raided like 8 times… What’s the current? Is it still torrenting with proxies?
I just got my automated pirating machine set up!
Here’s the wiki for the *arr apps!
- Radarr for movies
- Sonarr for TV shows
- Prowlarr for index management
- Optional Doplarr Discord Bot for requests
Set up your profiles for Radarr/Sonarr to pick the quality of release you want (1080p, min/max file size, etc)
Feed Radarr/Sonarr your qbittorrent info, nzbget & Usenet info
They will automatically search the indexes (I use 1337x for torrents & nzbgeek for Usenet) for the files that fit your parameters, download it, and organize it.
All you have to do is point Plex at the output folders and BAM, automated pirating.
I even took it a step further and set up Doplarr - a Discord bot that handles requests. Now friends/family can ping the bot with their movie/show requests and it’ll sync up to Radarr/Sonarr and add their requests!
Oh, the high seas are very, very busy these days. Still a bit difficult for the non technical user, but there is buried treasure out there.
Non technical users can just use Stremio and a debrid service. Couldn’t be simpler.
Torrents are still around, lots of sites out there for them.
Word on the street is that reddit’s arr slash piracy has a pretty good guide to it in their wiki, including lists of generally trustworthy torrent sources. I of course don’t torrent, because I’m terrified of legal consequences–I just browse shady but technically legal websites to stream my anime
Content leaving isn’t a problem. If they give up some things they have more money to get the rights to other content, and usually by the time it leaves I’ve either watched it or don’t want to. If it’s one of the rare things I want to watch several times, I can just buy it. But cracking down on password sharing is ridiculous. They’ve been functioning fine with people sharing passwords. I bet the current pricing accounts for password sharing. But now people in college can’t be on the family netflix? Pure greed.
This is incredibly annoying for series. Crunchyroll dropped Bleach, a series with over 350 episodes, when I was at episode ~100. A few years ago I started to manually keep track of the episodes I watched, since you lose your progress when they drop it (true for crunchyroll, prime and netflix)
Content leaving is totally a problem. I’ve lost track of the number of times my spouse and I say, “Oh hey, what about we finally watch xyz that’s been in our queue for ages? Yeah that seems like a good one for Friday pizza night! …oh, it’s vanished from our queue, hooray.”
It’s not my full time job to keep tabs on what’s coming and going from the damn entertainment service that I hope to use in my ever dwindling reserves of free time. Especially when there’s alternative means available that are not too difficult to use.
Best printer 2023: just buy this Brother laser printer everyone has, it’s fine - The Verge
(or a laser printer in general, Brother is just a Known Brand)
That article was a surprisingly funny read. Thanks for sharing it.
Can confirm. Support brother for their ethics and quality.
HP can make good printers. It has the right hardware, capabilities and price (Of the printers, not the ink) to be a very good product. It’s just their obnoxiously asshole-design software that is designed to make you to keep paying for using a product you already own.
Kinda reminds me of Sony when it was managed by Engineers and Sony after the Engineers in CxO positions were replaced by MBAs back in the 90s after they Movie & Music side of the business gained the upper hand over the Consumer Electronics side.
Sure, they could still design good products and manufacture them with high quality standards … and chose instead to make DRM-locked pieces of crap (designed with as top objective protect the IP of the Movie & Music business from all those “evil” consumer who might want to, say, listen to their music in more than one device without buying it once per device) using inferior parts than before and likelly to be manufactured in the same factory in China working for the same Taiwanese Manufacturing Outsourced as all the other crap products.
Back in the 80s they were a byword for quality, nowadays they’re just another brand.
The driver support for Linux is just awful. I couldn’t get the Brother 7055W to work on Arch. It worked on Fedora though, but I don’t have that anymore.
I gave up also. The entire software experience is just shit and buggy as hell. Avoid.
I’ve had two Brother laser printers now, in both cases drivers were packaged as either .deb or .rpm.
I’m currently running a Brother HL-L2395DW mono multifunction laser printer under KDE Neon, and both the scanner and printer work perfectly over the network.
But I’m on Arch
I have this one. NEVER had an issue with it. It’s now years that I use it with 3rd party cartridges without problems.
What the fuck is wrong with people? It’s been common knowledge that hp is trash for decades now. The whole idea of capitalism is that the bad products fail when customers go to the competitors who do a better job, but hp is not a monopoly and there are better competitors that exist, but people keep in buying HP because frankly, they are too fucking stupid. Capitalism is a lie because consumers are too stupid to pick the best products.
The average person is not invested into printers and just needs a printer to occasionally print something. It’s not something they know a lot about and in the store they see a cheap printer from a well known brand that gave them good experiences with other products. It makes total sense for them to buy it. I’m sure they will know what products/brands to avoid in other areas that are unknown to you.
To add to yours, when the person who isn’t up on printers goes to a store like walmart that has 4 different HP models on the shelf ranging from $40 to $90, one cannon for $80, and one brother for $120, they will be much more apt to get the HP because they just don’t know.
My hp laptop works fine, but yeah hp printers are terrible. They are very slow to print, and the ink was quite expensive.
Most people just buy a printer, they’re not doing research on the subject. And if they’re not using computers day to day, or for work, they’re even less likely to know what shit hp is up to.
There was a time when Hewlet Packard products were the best, them it became HP and…
I was there, but that was decades ago.
If you only print something once every couple of months I only need a cheap printer and dont care if the ink is a bit more expensice since I never use it. Though I admit my blood pressure always rises trying to get the thing to work
Ink jets burn ink even if you dont print anything, with their periodic “cleaning cycles”. That or their nozzles jam if you dont print often enough. They can make really high quality prints, but I’d never buy one again. Lasers can sit for months and they still pop out perfect prints every time.
Shit that should be fucking illegal, this.
If they were not aware of it before buying then it is illegal.
You don’t actually need to be aware of it. Because you said you were aware of it, when you clicked Accept on the EULA, and on page 62 of the EULA it said they have the right to disable your printer remotely at any time and for any reason.
When ever I am forced to sign something (like some contract addendum for my job) I write that I don’t understand anything on that paper, or now I write it in email before e-signing.
In decent nations, an EULA is considered an attempt by the seller to, after the purchase, change the terms of the implicit contract which was the sale, so it’s has no legal standing whatsoever.
Absolutelly, the seller can set contract terms before the sale is done (and even then there are lots of limitations to avoid things like bait & switch, so it usualy has to be pretty clear and upfront and there are certain rights that a retail buyer simply cannot loose, even contractually), but never after the sale has been done.
EULAs only have legal standing in a few places, including a few States in the US.
EULAs can very well be legal when you can read tgem before you purchase. Though German courts somewhat assume that nobody reads them, which becomes relevant if somebody puts something very unexpected in there. I would expect that they somehow disable only the ink, not the whole printer. Apparently thi also makes buying used printers a mess.
It should be. But you agreed to it. Gotta print out that child support declaration in 20 minutes before your lawyer has to go to court? Hey fuck you consumer. Have a medical emergency and need to print something to save a patient? Fuck you consumer.
Someone should sue them for everything they are. Because they are thieves of the highest order.
But you agreed to it.
When does an agreement become null and void when the knowledge and time needed to understand the terms, and especially whether they even stand in the various jurisdictions, is simply unfeasible for a layperson to be expected to possess?
In a similar vein, if an agreement requires a lawyer on call/retainer to interpret, what court besides a bought court would possibly uphold such a standard?
Fwiw I’m not asking this with the expectation of you personally having the answers, but to further highlight the absurdity of many of these so-called agreements.
EULAs and TOSs have been tossed out in court before under the logic that you need to understand an agreement for it to be legally binding and that not reading the agreement inherently prevents you from understanding it.
Can you provide case law? I’m interested.
Wikipedia has an overview and their enforceability varies pretty dramatically across the US (which is why many such agreements attempt to specify which states or courts they must be litigated against in).
Printer company are one of the biggest legalized scammer we currently have. Out water and some ink they make huge amount of Profit.
They are the Definition of making Gold out of shit.
I’ve been saying for about 15 years now – you’d have to be a masochist to buy HP printers. Why do people keep enabling these shits? You just encourage them to be even worse. Don’t stand for even a little of their bullshit and they will change or die. You make a noose for your own neck.
HP have been on my shitlist for so long. Everyone needs to have a shitlist. Anti consumer behaviour should never be forgotten.
On a side note, Vodafone are also on my shitlist. I did give them a reprieve once only to be reminded of why they were on my shitlist.
People, get your shit together.
Anti consumer behaviour should never be forgotten.
I still don’t buy Sony products after that time they booby trapped their CDs to install malware on everyone’s computers.
This is true if everybody do it, otherwise nothing will change. As we know there are too many people on the planet and too many idiots among them that will buy these products and so company can’t get away with everything nowadays. Look at Facebook, Twitter, reddit, hp. In my country there’s a huge food company that put fucking poison in baby formulas, and killed some of them (and others with lifetime growth issues) and guess what? People stopped buying from them for 2 years, they pulled through and now they are one of the top companies.
People are still buying HP printers because there are no alternatives. In my experience Epson is the worst. The are all the same, and we have no alternative other than letting them fuck with us. And they know it.
Brother has been amazing. Good products, manufacturer support for all operating systems, no subscription bullshit.
No, I think that’s blatantly wrong.
Idk if Brother is the best no-bullshit alternative, but it’s definitely supposed to be a no-bullshit alternative.
Even if we had no other alternative, we could crowd-fund one.
The Epson Eco Tank is absolutely amazing…HP sucks but don’t shame Epson.
I’ve never used on owned an Epson but I’ve been hearing wonders about the EcoTank line.
Affordable, lasting, dirt cheap ink, user replaceable printing heads, also cheap, and linux friendly.
Funny thing is, I know all of this and their bad behavior. I needed a new printer, ordered it but they didn’t have it in stock so they asked me to change my order and offered HP with extra toner and all that. Half asleep I didn’t even think twice. It was good price, extra toner.
From day one, nothing but problems until I broke the spell last year and got a Brother printer. Night and day in terms of quality and obedience.
I assume that’s the case with many people. Cheap printer available right now or some local deals make it even better looking. Someone who doesn’t know better like mom or pop buys it and there it is, pain. Then they realize what they have done and perhaps sell the damn thing, so pain jumps on someone else who just needed a cheap printer.
I’ve bought HP a few times, because the new printer was about the same price as buying new ink cartridges. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just being real. And I’m not proud
That’s how they get ya. The high cost of being poor
I just read an article the other day that said LG is about to start charging subscription fees for washing machines 🙄
I will go old school and start washing my clothes against a rock in the river before I’ll pay a fucking subscription to use my own washing machine
That is crazy.
Like a damn laundromat. So is LG gonna supply water and power too? Wtf are the charging for? The right to buy their product? Lmao. Fuck off.
Go analog. Real analog. Sticks and stones baby.
The article said the subscription was for “software updates” which really seems like something they should provide for free anyway so you’re really just paying for the privilege to use their precious machine that you already paid for lol
Software updates for what? New ways to wash your clothes? I only use like two or three settings in mine
Knowing LG it’s probably updates to make it play Jingle Bells at Christmas time or something lol
Sounds like paywalling security updates.
Those pesky hackers turning off my washing machine when I’m trying to do laundry!
Well, if your washing machine was connected to the internet you would also need security updates. Of course the only reason you’d connect your washing machine to the internet would be in order to get said security updates in the first place.
Great job creating a need by developing the fix for it in the first place.
Potentially more serious than that. A poorly protected washing machine (or any other IOT device) can serve as an attack vector into your local network.
I think it’s for “smart” washing machines that you can control from your phone etc. So that’s likely what the “updates” would be related too…why you’d need to control your washing machine from afar is beyond me but some people love smart gadgets and will by anything that connects to their phone.
There are cases for it, eg programming a wash to occur when energy demand is low.
In my opinion we should be pursuing technologies to do this that don’t require an internet connection. Even being able to program a schedule into the machine and it can detect if something is in there or not. That would be enough since energy usage follows a relatively consistent plot. These companies don’t give a shit about anything other than coming up with ways to make more money.
The cost of the laundry subscription is likely to vastly out cost the energy savings it may provide.
Ya it’s a shit idea to go subscription in any situation. You really do not need any kind of ongoing updates/subscription unless the product was built around a subscription model. If it can done mechanically on basic programmable outlets then it can be coded the same way. I would be fine buying a laundry machine, asking my utilities provider what time to run it, and then programming that into the machine manually.
I hate the make everything a smart appliance trend… Grills, washers and dryers, dishwashers, coffee machines… WHY? No one needs this shit.
Huh. I do my best to avoid anything that connects to my phone.
I hope this is rage bait because I can’t think of any reason a washing machine would ever need a software update. Is it like a smart machine? If so then just let me disable it
Fucking software updates for a washing machine? If my washing machine needs a software update, that should be a fucking recall. A washing machine should be a fully embedded system imo.
It’s updates for the cybersecurity that exists strictly only because it is connected to the internet which in turn is something that exists strictly only because there’s software updates.
Megaman Battle Network was prophetic. Terrorist will flood your house using a phone.
Why would anyone connect a washing machine to the internet??? To play Skyrim?
what is the difference between a subscription and a never ending loan
With a loan you actually receive money at the start.
A loan usually comes with full support and warranty service for the duration of the loan. With a subscription I bet you get to pay without receiving these benefits in return.
Well any manufacturer warranty would apply to the machine regardless of how you pay for it
Yeah. I think I’d rather employ someone to wash my clothes for me than pay a subscription
So they have all these printers connected to their servers I guess. Nice. Not a security risk at all.
Best printer I’ve owned has been Brother. But hp is always at the top of reviews, because hp pays them off I guess.
HP printers are now pure scamming dog shit. The HP printer division must have been taken over by criminals.
The first laser printer I worked with was a HP 4L and it was fantastic. So fantastic, that we implemented it company wide, and they were close to immortal. The last of them got killed off when we got follow-me print.
If you want a decent laser printer today, stay clear of HP and get a Brother instead.
Third voice for a Brother. I used to work an office supply store and they were by far the most reliable printers we sold.
I’ve had my Brother printer for several years and never had an issue. I don’t have the color one, just black and white. Would buy again.
That was because of a misunderstanding. Brother started a subscription service and people assumed that meant you had to pay a monthly fee to use the printers like with HP. Instead, it’s a toner subscription like Dollar Shave Club or Amazon’s Subscribe and Save where they auto-send a new toner at your requested interval.
I use cheap Chinese knockoff toner in my Brother laser
I heard they stopped allowing that recently.
Saw some people posting recently they sold out also
I also heard a rumor about something somewhere, that maybe something might have happened. But I’m not sure. /S
I just installed a Brother printer for my dad, absolutely zero bullshit.
Yes, some of their firmware updates started breaking aftermarket toner cartridges and support said “that sucks” like it was very intentional. It seems constrained to a few of the MFC color models more than anything tho I’ve never had any issues other than bad wifi modules in the b&w home office lasers. Which if you’re using wifi on a printer that’s your own damn fault lol
Yeah I’m not sure whether this is shenanigans or an actual problem Brother is managing here. The post does mention there are problems with incorrect response to temperature management with the unoriginal cartridge, which again could theoretically cause harm.
I honestly wasn’t aware unoriginal cartridges were a thing for Brother printers, since the originals tend to be quite reasonable.
But to continue using the unoriginal cartridges he can as the answer states, use BRAdmin to downgrade the firmware.
So it’s not like Brother is attempting to take control of your printer like HP likes to do.
I’m sure HP didn’t ramp up their bullshit from 0 to 11 overnight, the question now is how much we can trust Brother not to be walking the same path and mandating more and more restrictive firmwares in the future. I think them opensourcing drivers and firmwares would help mitigate that, and if their business model is really to be that sole good guy and antagonize the likes of HP/Epson/… they don’t have anything to lose and a lot to win (or as a minimum, myself as a customer).
HP has done the ink cartridge shenanigans for more than 30 years now. They just recently found a new trick. Apart from that nothing has really changed.
I am not aware Brother ever did similar things to basically trick or cheat their customers. Most other vendors are somewhere in between. AFAIK none are as bad as HP.
My dad is running his Brother HL-1212W printer on the open source Linux driver, works perfectly fine, and I was actually surprised about the high quality of his prints for such a cheap printer.
AFAIK Brother is among the best regarding opensource drivers too.
All this printer talk almost makes me want to buy a new printer. My current printer is a 14 year old Samsung color laser, and the print quality is not that stellar anymore. ;) The Samsung open source driver kind of suck for this printer. There isn’t even a driver for this specific model CLP-325W, so I have to choose another Samsung printer that is (mostly) compatible.
The Brother printer was completely plug and play. The system recognized the printer, and installed the correct open source driver, no hassle at all.
Can you avoid firmware updates? Are there domains that need to be blocked to prevent them?
Yes the firmware updates are only voluntary. The driver will sure nag you to do them but you can choose when and what version easily.
I’ve had the same brother inkjet printer for 14 years now, and it still works great.
“You’ll own nothing and you’ll be happy”
I guess this sentence is already became the reality in some countries if you can’t even buy a god damn printer without it locking you out.
Terminal capitalism looks a lot like communism.
Buy a brother printer instead. They may be a bit more expensive, but their easy mantainance and the amount of bootleg ink you can find online makes it worth the extra price.
Last time this came up, people were quick to bring up brother, and others (and that was new) to mention that brother started to do the same crap (limiting 3rd party toners). So I really don’t know what to think of them anymore.
I could be in the market for a b&w laser printer/scanner soon so I’ll keep an eye on replies here.
Brother pulls similar shit. My brother printer day my ink is out, and prints shittty pages, but the test page it prints is absolutely gorgeous.
In my experience laser Brothers are still less fussy and way more reliable and durable than competing brands.
Do Epson printers have DRM on the ink?
Kind of, yes. 603XL has many compatible options, but the 604 of current printers was not available for cheap when I looked a few months ago.
Well I guess I will keep my 13 years old b/w laser printer then. Still works like a charm. There is no dried ink, no DRM, nothing. And it just works even it has not turned on for a year.
Honestly just having a laser/led printer removes so many of the problems with printers. All inkjets should be replaced.
Idk about LED printers but ink jet is better than laser for printing photos. For general use I think laser should be the standard over ink jet, definitely.
If I need photos printed, I’ll go to a shop. It doesn’t happen that often and, frankly, inkjets suck so badly that I honestly doubt I’d save time or money owning one. All the headaches I’ve dealt with just trying to print basic stuff like shipping labels and documents disappeared the moment I bought a Brother laser printer.
Totally agree. I’m not going to buy special paper and fuck with settings when I can just pay a little extra for a professional to do it.
Every time I think printers can’t get any worse, they get worse.
What’s next? are they going to have to scan your anus to confirm that it’s actually you printing things? I shouldn’t give them ideas.
By the way, I’m sure there’s a way to get into the firmware of the printer to disconnect it from that centralized service.
What’s next?
Printed ads.
I can picture it, if you don’t want ads printed at the bottom of every page you have to subscribe.
I would think it plays an ad on the screen and you have to touch it to start so it knows you’re there and doesn’t print until the ad is finished.
Omg
Yes
Oh god, imagine your printer waking you up at 3 am as it spits out an ad for Arby’s. But hey, ink at half price!
What’s next?
The firmware will ask for a tip every 10 pages.
Please drink a verification can
“PLAYER ATTEMPTING TO STEAL ONLINE PLAY!!!”
mom just walked in the room
I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t. The companies that make printers have always been scamming people with their printers and all the shitty things the printers do.
They’re designed to be shitty and expensive on purpose so that you have to call the guy to fix it and pay an enormous amount of money every time the printer stops working by design.
If they could get away with it, they would have made paper that only works on their printer, and it would be more expensive than normal paper but you have to use it.
Dymo has done that a year ago.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=xzSDJRC0F6c
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Or get the brother printer while they’re still good.
Why not just not allow it to connect to any internet and use wired printing?
Even better!
Please drink verification can to continue
Actually, someone already came up with the idea of anal fingerprinting, albeit in another context: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=DJklHwoYgBQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
A whole other brown ring of quality
I switched to one of the Epson EcoTanks after the HP Ink got super expensive (Over $150 to replace all 4 cartridges). Printer was $$$ but the ink in bottles ($15 a pop, Costco sells them all in a pack for $40) is cheap enough that for the in-frequent printing we do at home (My partner uses it more than me for making buttons and stuff)
But all printers have page counters, even the ecotanks…
Do tell, I’m curious to learn more. Does it really matter if it knows how many pages you’ve printed? It’s not going to magically tell you you can’t print anymore when you can see that there’s the link in there
No it doesn’t care. You put the ink in, when it empties the printer stops. Ink is cheap, even official Epson. Worth the high upfront cost of the printer.
