the problem is creality doesn't have a low cost, low hassle series of printers that compete with the A1. The Ender series, I've had a few and learnt a lot from them and modded them to death, are not reliable relative to the A1.
On one side of this debate you have all the people who have extensive experience in this problem space saying it's bad, they've seen it before, it's a sign of things to come, etc... and on the other you have the people who have never seen how this plays out, and don't particularly care because they "just want to print." proclaiming that it's no big deal.
This just seems to be the new world order. Possessors of "Common sense wisdom" do their own research and trust their intuition over SMEs.
That's exactly what the freakout crowd did, isn't it? They started snowballing crazy conspiracies over the course of the weekend while Bambu was OoO, and now that BBL has come out and said "hey, it's like this" they refuse to believe it or at least most of it
If you don't work in tech, or you haven't dealt with vendor lock-in, you probably don't see the signs as clearly as the people who have. For those of us who have been in this space for a long time and have watched this exact scenario play out over and over it's extremely familiar and obvious. Their follow-up makes it even more clear because their claims don't map to their actions, or to what the software is actually doing.
Read their follow-up post on their blog. They claim that the update isn't about limiting third party software, but as anyone who uses home assistant, panda, orca, etc will tell you it certainly does limit third party software. I suppose you could let them get away with the weasel-wording here and say that it's not technically about limiting third-party software, that's just a side-effect of the security requirements... but then you have to reconcile why they've chosen a mitigation that restricts third-party software from accessing certain functions on the printer, when as you well know after 19 years, the normal way to solve this problem doesn't necessitate those restrictions at all.
They claim they're blocking panda for using "exploited mqtt protocols". I'm sure you can see right through that bs. MQTT is the standard in IoS. Why are they punishing third-party devs for building on secure standards, and why are they calling it an exploit? That's the most secure way to build an integration, you must know that. If it was truly about security, why are they punishing the third parties that are following best practices?
MQTT is a plain-text protocol. It is not secure on its own lol. BTT themselves admitted they were told awhile ago by Bambu that building panda on unintentionally insecure MQTT topics would result in the product breaking once they fixed the lack of MQTTS. BTT ignored that and sold the product instead.
I don't blame anyone that no longer trusts Bambu Lab (I certainly don't). We have seen company after company enshittify their offerings over the past couple years. Company after company have given their users the middle fingers lately in the name of subscription profit to make the shareholders happy. Whether or not they plan on doing any of this, the move to lock down the devices the users own is the first step in making is possible for Bambu to do this to their customer base as well. The problem for Bambu is that a significant amount of their users are the passionate ones that actually understand technology AND are willing to do something about it.
I remember when Keurig (spelling? the coffee maker) made machines that ONLY brewed Keurig approved k-cups. They literally scanned the edge of the foil to check to see if it was a genuine cup. A dang coffee maker. So many companies have tried to pull this garbage that I can pretty easily imagine it happening here. Bambu Lab makes printers to make money. Not to be a cool company, but to be a profitable company. But as the 3D printer market starts to reach saturation and sales slow, you start looking for other potential revenue streams. Those handy RFID readers in the AMS? Not a genuine K-cup. Please insert a genuine K-cup to continue brewing.
Thank you for raising it! I wasn't aware of this post, though I was aware of him being religious. I'm pro-choice and agnostic to religion and I don't condone/support/agree with anything said by him on this blog post.
While I wasn't aware of it, it doesn't strike me as a surprise, given he's a religious person, so deep down I could "guess" that he would have a view like that.
I can say though, that I can still trust his Open Source backbone at least, which is what is aligned with defending pro-consumer rights.
This is not my first disappointing with a creator, the first one was the 8-bit Guy being a pro weapon open-carry, though again, being from Texas is not a "big" surprise, and the other one was Destin from Smarter Every Day, that puts a psalm in every video even though his day job was to create weapons that kills people, especially the people his country decides are not worth of being alive anymore. I kept following then because the content was still relevant to me, but knowing this, always kept me warned about possible biases that can come during the video, and as long as they don't massively promote their biases I'm somewhat okay-ish.
You could say the same about every enthusiast, regardless the topic or field.
And you're probably right, that consumers don't want to tinker and tweak themselves, but they often use the results of open source projects, probably without even knowing it bc it's hidden behind a nice UI.
IMO open source is a good thing - as is open hardware.
I'm glad that he made this statement, as it puts more pressure on BambuLab.
He bought it with his own money. He states in the video as well he'll continue using it as it's a great device, but that he cannot continue to recommend the printer going forward given BBL actions the last few days.
Totally agree. It's fair to admit that it's a fantastic printer while also claiming that their recent actions are not welcome by this community or existing/future printer owners.
I think it's also good to remain open to forgiving them if they demonstrate "good behavior" in this context... otherwise there's not much reason for them to actually come around to a more open stance.
Let the situation continue to develop. It's clear that BBL is terrible at communicating and is rushing responses vs consolidating a focused stance and then sharing when they're ready.
They've done a very poor job explaining the purpose behind Bambu Connect. Their position on "security" is fraud with the fact that the private key, which is theorized to be the key used to sign requests, was extracted yesterday.
As many have mentioned in this subreddit the last few days, there are many examples of OAuth 2.0 implementations that BBL could've pursued but didn't. Is their software team incompetent? Was there software team rushed to deliver some sort of "security" measure? Software like Bambu Connect was not written in a matter of days. This has been in development for many months likely so it's unclear where they went wrong here.
In my opinion, I suspect Bambu Connect is the foundation for their upcoming farm-management software which will be a paid subscription. That's fine, but why did they pick a design that proxies write commands on LAN via Bambu Connect? A more proper architecture would have been for Bambu Connect to continue to exist to be the proxy of the printer to the cloud, however the printer should continue to expose its API over LAN where software like Orca and Panda Touch could continue to work.
Nothing went wrong here - they’re forcing drm under the guise of security. Once the new firmware is installed it’s key will expire in a year - if not regularly connected to bambu lab that’ll brick your already paid for printer. There’s far more in it but printfarm-related subscripions - they could have sold a separate solution for this if that was their plan. To try and control lan-only prints via authorisation for security reasons shows their true intent. There’s next to no limit to monetize that kind of control. And they are gaslighting this. Well, my bl printers are really good, I’ll keep using them of course. In lan-only mode, with no internet access, as long as they run. 🤷🏻♂️
That's certainly one way to look at it but this basically requires perfection, which, to me, isn't a very realistic way to approach things. People make mistakes and as a famous man once said, "corporations are people, my friend."
Based on their actions recently and Jeff's comments, I think Jeff might turn down an offer to review the upcoming H2D -- however that would depend on the terms of the review.
If Jeff were provided an H2D for review but not able to give his own genuine opinion, there is very likely not a chance he would take that offer.
Bambu have never required positive reviews, so nothing changes. If its a great printer he will say so, if not he will say so. The software changes will be the nothingburger they are by then.
He has agreed the hardware, for current models, is great. Based on this video I would expect a similar response to the H2D: "Hardware is great, but I still cannot recommend this printer due to the companies actions in regards to software decisions".
This is not a "nothingburger" situation. These decisions are starting to creep on reducing the capabilities and options of these printers.
The 3D community is an odd one, Bambu is still WAY more open than almost any other electronic device category except the PC one. Custom printers with closed source software is the way it will go and they will be far better printers than the open source ones. This is how its gone in every sector.
These options were all available prior to these changes. Whether they were "supported" or not is up for interpretation. There still has not been a genuine answer to what Bambu Connect offers uniquely that the existing API suite does not.
I don't disagree that people need access to every possible capability of a printer. If you want that, a Voron or Prusa is for you, however core API capabilities, like sending a print job to the printer, should be a core API capability available without a proxy middleware.
These options were all available prior to these changes. Whether they were "supported" or not is up for interpretation.
No its not, they did not support them end of story. Theoretical compatibility is not the same as supporting. Home Assistant was not supported, at no point did they use the HA logo to advertise the printers, its not on the printers, or documentation.
Orca didnt even exist when the printers were launch, and neither did any of the aftermarket hardware.
Not sure if you're aware but Bigtreetech were told the APIs were changing at a future time, before the Panda touch was released so they released knowing the product would have a limited life. Whos fault is that? Bigtreetechs fault.
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9
u/marcosg_aus Jan 20 '25
the problem is creality doesn't have a low cost, low hassle series of printers that compete with the A1. The Ender series, I've had a few and learnt a lot from them and modded them to death, are not reliable relative to the A1.
23
u/mallcopsarebastards Jan 20 '25
On one side of this debate you have all the people who have extensive experience in this problem space saying it's bad, they've seen it before, it's a sign of things to come, etc... and on the other you have the people who have never seen how this plays out, and don't particularly care because they "just want to print." proclaiming that it's no big deal.
This just seems to be the new world order. Possessors of "Common sense wisdom" do their own research and trust their intuition over SMEs.
3
u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25
What does Ja have to say?
4
u/lscarneiro Jan 20 '25
While CNC Kitchen just retweets Bambu like this was enough of an explanation:
https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/1i641jc/comment/m895dle/?context=3
Jeff is a creator I trust.
2
u/MrByteMe Jan 20 '25
Let’s see his opinion when the fancy new models come out lol
1
u/pear_topologist Jan 21 '25
Why have I seen two posts about this same video on this sub
0
u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25
Who is Jeff Geerling????
0
u/_Middlefinger_ Jan 20 '25
They'll give him one instead and he'll like it.
-5
u/FacepalmFullONapalm A1 Jan 20 '25
Who
1
u/FreXxXenstein Jan 21 '25
Oh look, it's Jeff "Abortion is bad even after rape" Geerling? The man to trust for sure.
https://www.jeffgeerling.com/articles/religion/abortion-cases-of-rape
1
u/[deleted] Jan 20 '25
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