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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But then it’s in DVD quality. Why not just pirate a full quality version?
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?
fmhy.net will tell you.
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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.
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What software would that happen to be, supposing it’s not MakeMKV?
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Thanks! I’ve read that VLC can do it before, but I’ll look into giving it another shot sometime. The guides I found weren’t exactly the best, but with the mentioned packages I should be able to better narrow the searches to better guides, I think.
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
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.
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!
Ready boys? Say it with me, now.
BROTHER👏LASER👏PRINTER👏
I love the fact that brother basically does no marketing as far as I know. They just end up shining like a diamond because they make a generally good product and everyone else around them makes absolute trash.
I only bought a brother printer because of recommendations from reddit. It’s so much better than my old hp inkjet that randomly started asking me to sign in in order to print or scan.
Why tf would I need to sign in to my HP account online in order to print in my own fucking home.
Yep, totally. In the vile shit that printer business is, Brother seems to be the only brand to not be straight-up anti consumer. I have a Brother all-in-one machine at work, it works out of the box on all devices, scans with whatever app, doesn’t push some bullshit custom nagware every time you print and, best of all, ACCEPTS NONAME TONERS without saying a single word of complain. It doesn’t refuse to print, doesn’t even mention that you may get worse quality prints (yeah right). It just prints and we don’t have to think about it and I really appreciate it.
I shit you not I have a brother laser printer that I don’t even know how old it is. My dad pulled out of our basement and cleaned it up and got it running so I could use it in college back in 2009. Skip ahead to 2016 and I’m using it for the table cards at our wedding. It’s 2023 and I still use it from time to time. I’ve only changed the toner once and cleaned it a handful of times, but that sums up the entirety of the maintenance while I’ve had it. I have to plug it into my computer via USB which isn’t so bad. But they don’t have a driver available for OSX anymore so it’s now a PC only printer. I’ll keep using it until it stops working or isn’t compatible with any computer anymore.
I have to plug it into my computer via USB which isn’t so bad.
A $15 Pi Zero W running cups will make it a “wireless printer”. … Although you’ll probably need this site to find one in stock. Don’t pay much more than $15 – those are scalpers.
Regarding the driver, I had the same problem with running my 2005 HP LaserJet 1020 on OSX, but got it running with a built-in driver for a printer in the same build group (LJ 1022, maybe?) so keep that in mind if you haven’t already tried it. I know your printer is Brother and not HP, but there may be a native Brother driver already in the OSX build you can use.
You may lose some advanced driver functionality doing this but most printing doesn’t require it anyway. If it works you’ll be able to print just fine. You can also search your model number and see what Mac printer driver hacks others have come up with, since this was not an uncommon thing with Macs back when I had to do it a few years ago.
But yeah, on the sad day my old HP LJ non-networked non-enshittified printer carks it, I’ll be getting a Brother. No way I give HP my business now.
Sorry to burst your bubble but Brother are also going down the subscription path.
They are but the pricing is ok, £2 a month for 50 pages. The higher end pricing seems to be around 3p per page which is what they price their toners at. They even allow you to rollover a decent amount of print credit. Now, if they had these printers in shops around the country and I could use the credit for those instead of just in my own home, I think it would be a really cool service. The local corner shop charges £2 to print a single sheet of A4 and then 50p per page after that.
Print credit? Fucking theft.
Do they force you to use the subscription model, or do they brick your device if you fail to keep up on payments?
If yes to either, fuck them.
No joke. I had HP and I knew Brother was painfree experience and when I was buying said HP, I completely forgot about them. Few years forward my old HP avoided destruction by sheer luck and my brother’s will to try and tame it. These days I have Brother laser printer and it takes whatever you throw at it without complaints. It’s so obedient am having issues accepting such behavior.
Got it, but which printer if I want to print photos (only a hand full every one or two months)
A printing kiosk or photo shop. They will be so much better quality. If you buy an inkjet and only use it once or twice a month the heads get clogged and you waste loads of ink cleaning it.
You can get them printed for 12 cents a photo at Walmart.
For me it’s so rare that I get them printed at the pharmacy.
What the other guy said. Unless you genuinely need high-quality color photos on a daily or weekly basis, you do not need an inkjet printer. Go to a print shop, get it done right and it’ll be much less headache – but the vast majority of the time I’ve needed something printed, it has been swathes of black text on white paper. And a plain B&W laser printer does that perfectly, with no bullshit. I just recommend Brother because they’re a decent company.
Yes, I have a b&w brother laser/scanner than is 6 to 7 years old and it goes on without any issues (except networking BS at times, but that is likely my problem)
I’ve moved to Brother from HP. Disappointed by the support for Linux. While the driver exists, a lot of them aren’t packaged. HP does a better job at that.
What about Epson? Specifically I’m considering one of the ecotank ones because I need to print stuff for board games like info sheets and so on that need rich colours and designs. Might even look into A3+ printers.
Are those useful? The per-page cost looks crazy low for an inkjet.
Got one of these years ago and it’s still kickin’
I find myself being a printer snob by judging a friend of mine for buying into HPs ink subscription ecosystem.
But people will think something is wrong when it just works and prints for years without needing any replacements
But never EVER buy a brother inkjet, its the same as all the other brands. You cannot insert bootleg ink anymore. My printer didnt accept any ink apart from the oem.
Epson ink tank. Bought it second hand and downloaded the drivers directly from them. They always want you to buy ink, but thats expected.
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.
Five years ago people were saying the opposite. My old Brother printer broke after 2 ink refills. I’ve had an HP for 2 years now and I’ve never had an issue with it. I was genuinely surprised people were trashing HP lately.
I’ve been hearing brother laser printers are the best workhorses for like 10 years consistently.
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.
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.
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.
Word
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.
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.
Their laptops and desktops are terribly cheap too. Just avoid HP all together is everyone’s best bet.
Snagged an 840 G6 for a little more than 100 and it’s working fine. Had the company send me a new touchpad and there hasn’t been an issue since
I can speak for their terrible cheapness, I work at a repair shop and we got a lot of HP laptops. It’s extremely common for the very stiff hinge just to snap the upper case because they didn’t even try to reinforce it. Just 3 screws to hold down this half an inch long hinge and that’s it, you can see it flexing and twisting when using it.
I swear all those HPs and frankly a lot of dells have the build of wet newspaper, I wouldn’t touch them (minus HP elite books, my 8770w is great).
On another note Lenovos and Thinkpads are always very sturdy and are very good.
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)
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
Hahah, I opened the link and it’s the exact model I have.
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.
I’ve had the same brother inkjet printer for 14 years now, and it still works great.
Saw some people posting recently they sold out also
A shame to hear how far HP has fallen. Back in the day they had some solid, workhorse laser printers that delivered for years with no issues and pretty good toner efficiency. Based on what I’ve read here, I’m not likely to buy another.
Brother.
Love my brother laser printer. I’ve had it for years, print infrequently, haven’t had to change toner once, and it works everytime I ask it to print on the first time
HP peaked with the LaserJet IIIsi. It’s all been downhill ever since.
Turns out that didn’t make the stock price go up fast enough to enable buy-backs for the execs.
I liked their reverse polish programmable calculators once.
My mom’s Amazon Halo that counts steps just shut off because they ended the service. I do not trust anything that requires live service at this point.
I’d also add so-called cloud storage. There is no magical cloud, there’s only someone else’s server/PC. Don’t trust it with personal data ever, or make your own “cloud” instaed.
I still have a poke walker step counter from like 2005 or whatever. Still works
nobody should support companies that place restrictions on their hardware for RANSOM
Uggg. Ransom is a great way to phrase it. I hate having app’s from the store and they “upgrade” to a subscription service leaving the licensed folks in the cold with no app updates. :/
there’s a software that I own a perpetual license for called “Clip Studio Paint” and they got around that license like scumbags by refusing to provide more updates and making a new software called “Clip Studio Paint 2.0” which was essentially the same software, just without perpetual licenses available… even then, I had already paid a lot and would have had to AGAIN. talk about scum of the earth
++ for brother. Still running my mfc j470 ink jet purchased in 2013. I purchased it because of their support of Linux and Android. I’ve NEVER used official ink cartridges besides what came with it. it’s printed 6900 pages
Nice x 100
I have a brother B&W laser printer but for anyone looking for a new printer, be wary of brother. Their latest firmware stops the allowance of 3rd party toner/ink cartridges. It’s disappointing because I’ve been a big proponent of theirs for years. Haven’t bought toner since 2019 on our printer.
Brother it is! I have a laser combo scanner printer MFC thingy, I guess from around 2010 or so, still works like a charm as a network device. I buy a third party toner every three years and that’s it.
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…
Been running my ecotank for almost three years as my business printer. Burned though boxes of paper. Refilled black once. I’m not sure what you’re complaining about here?
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 still ink 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.
“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.
Except for the original deskjet they had back in the early 90s, I haven’t touched HP, on purpose anyways, since then. I hate their printers, their computers, and their software. Nothing about their stuff works properly and has been garbage for me.
Damn you made me nostalgic now, still remembering the HP Deskjet 695C that I used with Windows 3.11 and the drivers you had in multiple floppy disks. It just never stopped working, until we replaced it with a Brother laser printer.
Their measuring equipment and calculators are some of the best. The rest is as sad as you make it sound.
