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Comment by stavros | Hacker News Reader

I bought a printer. It had some stuff. I didn't want that stuff to be gone after I bought it. That's a bait-and-switch, because they didn't explicitly say "be aware, that stuff is going away on Jan 2025".

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I don't know how I feel about this. I hear your frustration about this. OTOH, Bambu is a walled garden approach. I also know the Prusa Core 1 is going to be less open to keep the cheap aliexpress knock-offs at bay. This could be an issue with Bambu labs as well if cheap knockoffs start appearing using reverse engineered P1Ps with modified P1P firmware.

https://hackaday.com/2024/11/20/with-core-one-prusas-open-so...

They never officially supported compatibility with Orca, or Home Assistant. Vendors break compatibility with unsupported stuff all the time. Don’t make purchase decisions on unsupported features if you’re gonna get all bent out of shape about it.

They officially supported me printing without an Internet connection, which is stopping now.

Sorry to potentially pour oil into fire here, but I'm curious: did they really?

"Officially support" printing without internet connection?

Was this explicitly documented as a feature or did this just "happen to work" as you expected?

A lawsuit may have some leverage to find that something could have been "reasonably expected" to work in a certain way, but that's quite uncertain territory.

i.e. I would expect an Apple Watch to also work with Android Devices, but this was never officially supported by Apple and it's arguable whether it was reasonable for me to even expect this.

Yes, "lan mode" is an officially supported advertised feature, where you can happily print on an isolated network. (though as of this morning it now sounds like they're backing off after public backlash)

Interesting, this somewhat implies that outside of this "land mode" an Internet connection is otherwise required for printing

Yes, the default workflow on the product is that all prints go via their cloud service. For the first year or two of the X1C's existence this was the only way to print, but they later introduced lan mode.

Leading to obvious speculation as to why they have stuck themselves processing megabyte g-code streams between your desktop and the printer on the same network...

But since cloud use is optional anyone with the security/reliability/longevity concerns just don't have to use it.

Personally I don't see the cloud stuff as providing any value at all though I know people whose kids print stuff from their makerworld site via their phone app that consider it useful.

I have absolutely no insight into their operations or requirements, but when I see someone forcing traffic to their servers, I immediately think they’re looking for metadata, or training NN models on your data. NN generating 3D models is pretty valuable at the moment, and taking users data to train models without informing them is for some inexplicable reason considered ok even by many people that get foaming-at-the-mouth-mad over other privacy violations. Like I said, I’m just spitballing and have no knowledge of this operation, but it would give me pause before using it as a professional 3D artist.

Well yeah if you're not using LAN you're using WAN which means internet. But the option is there to use either one if you want, or even just put a physical SD card into the printer directly if you want, no network needed at all then, LAN or WAN.

My toilet doesn't officially support crapping without an internet connection either. I'd argue that in both cases it's implicit unless very explicitly disclaimed.

How would a toilet with no electronics require an internet connection?

Why does a 3d printer need internet?

They specifically advertise connectivity for a mobile app.

My Oral B toothbrush advertises connectivity for a mobile app. That doesn’t mean they can arbitrarily impose an internet access requirement.

The way things are going though, I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

I mean, as a snarky hyperbole about how ridiculous consumer products have become, sure. In reality, I would be very surprised if Oral B decided I needed Internet access to use my toothbrush.

Worst user experience ever idk why but I miss being able to plug a cable from a printer to a device and then printing

Had the new requires phone app workflow and it was so buggy had to just resort to UPS/Fedex

It wouldn't, but, if the vendor somehow made it require one, despite the very impressive technical feat, I'd feel cheated. Robbed, even.

[the point] <-------------------------------------------------------> [you]

You could still print without an internet connection, even before Bambu’s backpedaling.

Where do you see that? Seems one can still print via SD cards without any issue.

It says:

Operations That Do Not Require Authorization The following actions will remain unaffected by the authorization mechanism:

Sending status information from the printer (e.g., MQTT status push for tools like HomeAssistant).

Starting a print job using SD cards.

General operations outside the listed authorization controls.

https://blog.bambulab.com/firmware-update-introducing-new-au...

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