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.
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?
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.
I don’t think I we’ve used any of those actually.
fmhy.net will tell you.
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.
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.
I have 4k TV and 5.1 studio speakers and noone in my house can see the difference from modern streaming besides a little grain on still images. Always buy newer, at least two-layered disks, they are much better.
Of course that’s nothing compared to 4K/DTS/DA/HDR Blu-Ray rip, but it’s not that the movie is not watchable. DVD is the basic experience, 2010s cinema like, where Blu-Ray is just a crispy fresh layer added.
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.
Comparing to max quality >10-30GB torrent is not fair. You need to compare it to other DRM-free legal options, oh, there’s none. Side to side with Blu-Ray, really bad. But Blu-Ray is many times more expensive and less freedom friendly. Side to side with Netlix-like streaming, assuming you don’t use some high-end service, DVD is just better in real watching and not pausing and glaring at pixels.
Why isn’t it fair? No reason you can’t just torrent a 10GB Blu-Ray rip of the movie. It’s free, easy and probably takes less time than going out and buying a DVD.
I would say that side-to-side the quality of Netflix-like streaming is A LOT better, at least when it comes to video. Audio is probably comparable since both DVD’s and streaming services usually use Dolby Digital or Dolby Digital Plus.
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.
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.
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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Except when I accidentally rm -rf the media folder but shhhhhhhh
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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
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New skool is to use automation tools to grab and manage your media. You can still use torrenting but IMO using usenet is more reliable and doesn’t flag your ISP. I highly recommend anyone pirating to use 'arrs https://wiki.servarr.com/
Yes but with usenet you need to pay a monthly fee for a provider (generally) and a then the same for an index to find the content.
Also the selection is a lot smaller. IMHO a better solution is using realdebrid if you’re okay with paying already.
Yeah I can’t argue with the usenet fees but all three of my index sites I’ve had no issues with their free version so long as you do go wild and download ten terabytes in a night. I’ve actually had better luck with the selection compared to torrenting, pretty much is there in all of the popular resolutions. The only thing I have finding is some of the obscure adult swim shows but I can’t find them on my private trackers either.
I’ve been pirating since Napster and you’re right, it’s changed a lot. These days, I usually just stream from third party sites. Takes less room on your PC and is faster than downloading a torrent. Dopebox is where it’s at for most stuff. 9anime if you like anime, it’s better than the paid alternatives like Crunchy roll or Funamation.
If you want to stick to torrents I’ve found 1337x to be the best since TPB died.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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).
In most of the World EULAs have no legal standing whatsoever because they’re an attempt by the seller to after the sale change the terms of the sale.
It’s mainly in the US that those things aren’t instantly dismissed by the court as legally meaningless, but then again the US is way less consumer friendly that, for example, pretty much all of Europe.
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 treat my Brother laser like a rented uhaul truck and it just keeps going.
I have one of the complicated brother ones that scans and prints, including double sides, in colour, and it’s a tank. Works fine in Linux too. Connected or through the network.
It even does fax, which someone, somewhere probably finds useful.
Doctors offices and health insurance. It’s weird but technically fax machines are still considered “secure” communications for sending PHI. Sending it across the internet requires a lot of expensive hoops to jump through, or they could just buy a fax machine.
Send signed email. Done.
Bunch of weirdos, that’s what they are.
Funny thing is those faxes are going through internet anyway most of the time.
Where I live fax are considered a legal proof contrary to emails.
So for important contracts it is considered safer than mails.
And honestly it kinda is since an email can totally end up never being recieved without any kind of error or warning. A fax you should know immediately that it wasn’t received on the other end.
I still wish fax would disappear soon but an email is not a good replacement.
Emails are now considered the defacto standard for businesses but they suck and are absolutely not reliable.
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.
Mine still allows it. There might be a model or two that doesn’t but I’d be surprised.
Up to date firmware?
I treat that thing like a rented uhaul, of course the firmware hasn’t been updated
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
Eh, I am all about wired networking wherever I can, but my awesome old Brother laser printer gets used like once per month or two, and it lives off in a far corner of the house where it isn’t taking up valuable space. Plus it could work with a tiny fraction of the LAN bandwidth available to it.
On wi-fi it stays, lol. I think I may have had to reconnect it once in the decade+ we’ve had it. Otherwise, the printout is ready before I can even walk to the printer (unless it has a ton of pages, naturally).
I don’t even know how old it is at this point. I just know it’s over a decade because I didn’t buy a third party toner cartridge until 2014.
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.
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.
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?
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
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
man the world is so fucked up that I was more surprised that they weren’t already doing this
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.
Or get the brother printer while they’re still good.
What’s next?
Printed ads.
What’s next?
The firmware will ask for a tip every 10 pages.
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.
Why not just not allow it to connect to any internet and use wired printing?
A whole other brown ring of quality
Ready boys? Say it with me, now.
BROTHER👏LASER👏PRINTER👏
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)
Subscriptions are out of fucking hand.
It has been normalized by Streaming Services. Sad situation.
Looks like pirating is back on the menu, boys!
Never stopped my friend…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Homeowner-targeted inkjet printers are evil, especially from HP. NEVER buy one that works a subscription into the purchase. They are garbage, and can disable your cartridges if you cancel your subscription.
