Mama told me not to come.

She said, that ain’t the way to have fun.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • We have underground cables in the neighborhood, and above ground cables along the main road. The city does a good job trimming the trees, so branches falling on lines isn’t really a thing. We’re also a desert climate, so there aren’t that many trees anyway.

    That said, I grew up in the PNW (near Seattle) and we only lost power 2-3 times, though the outage was often for a few hours or even all night.

    100v instead of 110v, or sometimes a surge of 129 for a brief period

    Wow, that’s a crazy spike! I got a beefy surge protector, so I think I’m good, but I could see a UPS being worthwhile if your data is mission critical. Mine is just video games and some coding projects (which are backed up elsewhere anyway).











  • TL; DR - No. But actually maybe, depending on what you’re looking for and what you can put up with.

    Are you looking to access streaming services? Or are you okay with self-hosting?

    The FOSS solutions that support streaming services are pretty janky IMO because they don’t have support from the service, so you’re probably better off hooking up a laptop running Linux and access stuff in a browser. I had Netflix working through Kodi on a Raspberry Pi, for example, but like I said, it was super janky. Maybe it’s better now, idk, but check out OpenELEC and Kodi. You’ll need some hardware to run it on.

    If you can self-host your videos, Jellyfin is pretty great, and I think there are a couple more options. You’ll need to get the content yourself though and connect it to the TV somehow (e.g. the Jellyfin app if you have a smart TV).


  • But is it a lie?

    Here’s what I’ve seen so far:

    1. Rossmann reports on claims about Brother blocking third party cartridges on auto-updating firmware, and not providing older firmware
    2. Brother denies intentionally blocking third party cartridges

    There’s still the claim about the older firmware. If it was available, it would be pretty easy for customers to prove that a change in the firmware caused issues w/ third-party cartridges:

    1. cartridge works fine
    2. upgrade
    3. cartridge doesn’t work
    4. downgrade
    5. cartridge works fine

    That doesn’t prove it was intentional, it just proves it was the firmware update that caused the problem. If users want to stick w/ an older firmware, they should be allowed to, because Brother shouldn’t be able to decide what firmware they use.

    The broader point here is certainly valid though, I’m just unconvinced that it’s applicable. Why should we trust Brother on this when they make the way to prove the issue nigh impossible?


  • Sure, but they don’t need to be proof of anything. Rossmann reported on some users (I think there were multiple?) claiming something to be the case, and provided one bit of verifiable evidence: no access to older firmware.

    Brother claims they don’t intentionally brick printers that use third party cartridges, but that’s not verifiable. Brother also didn’t mention anything about why older firmware isn’t available. That’s a significant concern, since that would be a way for customers to prove that the firmware itself is the issue (printer works -> upgrade -> broken -> downgrade -> printer works).

    I think it’s 100% fair to raise the concern. It’s certainly not enough to warrant any kind of legal action, but it is enough for customers to investigate the claims for themselves. I think that’s worthwhile.



  • Mistakes happen. He comes with receipts, and sometimes those receipts are misleading. I don’t think he’s being intentionally wrong here, he took information from various communities reporting negative experiences, and extrapolated that there may be an issue there.

    And it’s not clear he’s actually wrong. We have the company claiming they don’t do it, but then what about the accusation that older firmware isn’t available? Surely if they don’t intend to break third party cartridges, they’d keep those available for people who want to downgrade. Maybe there’s a good reason for that too, idk, but my point is that Brother could be hiding something, it’s still unclear and we need more data.





  • Its distrubuted so you don’t lose your content if something happens to one location.

    Right, but you’ll lose your content if enough people lose interest in the network. That’s absolutely a thing in the crypto world where things move fast. Relying on the network effect to secure your data sounds… sketchy.

    which is needed in some form if it’s distrubuted

    Sure, and the easiest way to do that is w/ public key cryptography, sign your encrypted stuff and you can always prove ownership. A blockchain gives you that, but it’s hardly necessary to have consensus around that.

    include credit cards

    It probably uses some cryptocurrency. Lots of cryptocurrencies work well for micropayments (e.g. LiteCoin, Monero, or even Bitcoin w/ the lightning network).

    I just don’t see the need for a blockchain here. Bittorrent has been doing content-based addressing for ages, and it doesn’t need a blockchain, you just ask for the data at a given hash and you get it. Or you can use IPFS. If everything is properly encrypted, you’re good to go!

    What the blockchain does offer is a way to pay for storage. So the more you pay, the more likely your data is to still be there after some time as people leave the network and nodes drop and whatnot. All in all though, it seems really risky to put anything important on it, and you might as well just pay for a storage provider from a legal entity that you can sue if things go poorly (and maybe two, so you’re not screwed if goes bankrupt or whatever).