I finally replaced my iPhone 14 with a Xiaomi Fold 4 - the ability to turn it in to a small tablet has been far more useful than I anticipated, I also appreciate easy side-loading of apps and multiple stores.
There are some cons, especially with using a phone aimed at the Chinese domestic market (not all features and UI are in English)
But so far it feels like a far more innovative and 'free' ecosystem - iOS/iPhone was starting to feel really stale to me.
My understanding is that if I want to print via LAN, I have to auth against Bambu's internet servers, which is most definitely something I don't want.
Actually for my use case this doesn't work at all -- my printers are region locked to China, but I'm not currently in China so I can't connect to those servers -- meaning (I think!) if I upgrade their firmware, I can't print via LAN on my own local network... which just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
These are great printers, but there's no need for that.
Can you link to some specific detail on that, because I keep seeing that claim, but without any technical info.
I have a P1S which currently can print completely isolated from the internet. Unfortunately (or maybe not?) the new firmware isn't available for my printer, so I can't dig into it myself yet.
But I'd really like to see some sort of "when I try to do X it tries to connect to Y" or "I used to be able to do X, and now Y is required as demonstrated here".
Something more than the current hearsay and pitchforks echo chamber.
The following printer operations will require authorization controls:
Binding and unbinding the printer.
Initiating remote video access.
Performing firmware upgrades.
Initiating a print job (via LAN or cloud mode).
Controlling motion system, temperature, fans, AMS settings, calibrations, etc."
Now, PERHAPS, I can do that authentication locally... but given the plugin required for OrcaSlicer it doesn't seem likely
Yep -- I read that, but that doesn't spell out auth back to BBL's servers, just auth.
And keep in mind that OrcaSlicer already used Bambu Network Plugin to communicate with their printers. (It prompted you to download this on install of OrcaSlicer if you picked one of their printers.)
The move to Connect means that OrcaSlicer needs to send the print data to Connect via a protocol handler instead of to the plugin. Connect will then send it on to the printer itself, and from what I've seen it'll do that over LAN. (But I can't test because my printer doesn't support this yet.) I see this as akin to a print driver vs. printer-specific support built into an app. Not a bad thing at all, if done right.
The plugin already did (very minimal) auth via the Access Code and can do it with the printer and Bambu Network Plugin completely isolated from the internet. (I've done this.) So I'd like to know specifics of what's changing here.
Perhaps some... other or better way of authenticating to the printer? Previously there was just a single, essentially fixed, numeric string that gave complete access to the printer, and communication was via TLS with a self-signed cert.
I don't want to hypothesize about what it could be doing, I want to see what it's actually doing (or see some actual info from folks about what they've seen) so I can decide if I'm comfortable with that or not.
The bambu cloud service has a very low value-add and they are trying to make it mandatory. the speculation is that they are trying to add a subscription model for print farms, which 3rd party slicers enable.
I don't have a definitive source readily available, but from talking to people who were investigating the technical aspects, connection between the printer and slicer software will be mutually authenticated using a certificate that will issued by Bambu Cloud, issued only to blessed 1st party software, and verified by the printer upon connection over the local network.
So your blessed Bambu Studio instance connects to Bambu Cloud and requests a certificate, the server issues the certificate to you (or not), and then Bambu Studio may use it to connect to the printer on your LAN.
The certificates have an expiration time of 1 year, meaning that the printer functionality would severely degraded (missing network connectivity), at most 1 year after they take the servers offline or stop issuing certificates for any reason.
1) That cert is on the /client/ side, not in the printer. It has nothing to do with printer functionality, only with talking to the printer.
2) Expired certs do not mean things automatically get rejected. Using and allowing expired or self-signed certs is routine in the IoT world where certs on devices can't readily be updated. But again, that cert isn't from the printer.
3) Expired certs, just like the self-signed certs that are so commonly used, still result in things being encrypted on the wire. And often that's the point.
It seems to me that someone found/exported the cert, and is trying to make all sorts of WHAT-IF or THIS-COULD-MEAN-THE-WORST claims but are lacking some significant understanding. Without understanding the architecture and the rest of the code, and perhaps seeing that cert be used, this is just an artifact found in the distributed beta application.
I mean that the extracted cert that's going around is from the client (Bambu Connect) side. Everything it would get used for is a function of the client and how it talks /to/ the printer.
Even if it is used to sign some communications, it doesn't matter if it's expired or not on the server side (the printer side), unless the server chooses not to accept it. And then updating it would be a matter of updating Connect; the client.
There's no reason -- other than hyperbole -- to infer that a certificate which expires on the client side will cause the printer to stop doing anything.
For a web-y example, think of how a website which needs a client cert for auth -- like lots of gov't stuff -- would handle a client cert expiring. It'd either accept it anyway, or reject it. But it wouldn't mean the website breaks. And thus claims of that client certificate's expiration being a killswitch for printers is simply wrong.
Epic is a electronic health record (EHR) software used by many hospitals and clinics. It's not the only EHR there are many but it's probably the most known. Doctors usually type patient notes, diagnoses, prescriptions... everything goes in Epic and your team of providers can gain access to see that info.
I can't find any data to support this, just the figure that NEVs account for ~40% of new sales, no further breakdown. Do you have a reference, I'd be very curious to see the breakdown -- my view is biased by the high pure EV penetration in cities like Shenzhen.
Are those that are keeping their color but suffering from rapidly receding lines allowed to join too?
I'm sure someone will chime in to say there are plenty of these "clubs" but honestly, I grew up in a small town with no real "hacker" peers then have gotten so bogged down with work (and worked in areas without HUGE cultures like this) that I'm now starting to feel quite disconnected.
I just want to make silly things, learn some new skills and have fun -- having a "Safe" space to share that would be a boon.
> Especially as it's FOSS - rising ship raises all tides and all that.
That's anti-competitive, at least in many ways. I doubt Ford could freely give GM some highly profitable technology to help GM's profits; Ford should maximize its advantage. OTOH, there are industry standards - but those could be defined by performance or they could possibly be for (non-competitive?) aspects like safety.
Given the results are given to all and open to changes from all - I'm not sure how this is anti-competitive?
Do you mean a scenario where-by it's tuned to run on only hardware that is controlled by the vested parties, effectively locking out other players on the hardware level, while strengthening the desirability of said hardware by leveraging a greater number of software engineers under a somewhat false premise?
There seems to be a bug at the moment with multi-monitor on different resolutions, but reading thru the dev's github issues it also seems it will be fixed soon.
Aside from that, I'm really enjoying this, taking a little bit to wrap my head around it, but I think it'll very quickly become second nature -- can already see how in many cases it's going to be much faster and less distracting than reaching for the mouse.
There are some cons, especially with using a phone aimed at the Chinese domestic market (not all features and UI are in English)
But so far it feels like a far more innovative and 'free' ecosystem - iOS/iPhone was starting to feel really stale to me.
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