Not OP, but I chose not to go Bambu because of the closed ecosystem. I like that they're enabling custom firmware now, but they presented as very closed and proprietary, including network printing going through their cloud. While I'm not printing anything sensitive, I could see that being a concern for some, especially if you're designing your own prints. I get that they're the turnkey solution that "just works" out of the box, but so do my Qidi X-Plus 3 printers, and I can SSH into them if I want.
darkstar
joined 1 year ago
I agree. I chose not to go with the P1S because of Bambu's proprietary nature. I don't NEED to SSH into my printer or mess around in the internals, but it's nice to have that option, especially once a manufacturer moves on from an old model. It would be ideal to have community support once that happens. I went with the Qidi X-Plus 3 because of build volume and price too, not just openness, but aside from Bambu's wireless printing for some reason requiring data to go through their cloud I've only heard good things. I think this move to allow third party firmware is very smart and will draw more of the maker market, not just the average consumer.
Funny, that's actually what motivated me at my last job. Things were fucked up, but not so fucked up that it was overwhelming. It was the Goldilocks zone of just fucked up enough that I think I can not only fix it, but look good if I do. It was a fun journey, all told, but there were definitely frustrations, even ones that lasted years.
While the pirate in me says "hell yeah!", the system administrator in me says "Fuuuuuuuck". I was once part of an IRC network, and one of the biggest issue we had was with Brazilians who would break our rules and get banned. Just a minute or two later, they were back. It got so bad that we just said "Fuck it. We're banning all of Brazil." Not an ideal solution, but it beats spending our time chasing the majority offenders. It's the 80/20 rule, where 80% of your problems are caused by 20% of your users.
Now let's pretend somebody builds their new app around this new tech. I love the concept, but how do you keep order? How do you ensure people follow the rules? The only thing keeping users in line would be the fear of losing their "brand" (their username, their reputation). If the new app is something like a chatroom, there's no "brand" to be had, and you can simply use a new name. It would, obviosly be very different if the app were based around file hosting like Google Drive, because you don't want to lose your files, but anything with low retention will likely be rife with misconduct due to anonymity.
On the other hand, it would allow for a completely open internet, that no single government can shut down, which we're seeing happening more and more, with China, Iran, Russia, and Myanmar all shutting down the Internet, or portions of it, when those in power feel there's a threat to the status quo.
I'd argue that Perplexity is in this camp as well. It's my go-to for anything more open-ended or for multi-step research I need to do. No need to wade through garbage search results, and it cites its sources. Kagi seems to be doing very much the same thing, but in addition to their paid search engine service.
I don't know that I'd switch from Perplexity, but I could see an argument for it.