philpo @ philpo @feddit.org

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1 yr. ago

Then I would talk to your credit card company.

Not the same as one does include working in offline mode,your examples do not. Legally they are not the same. Neither is the developer mode comparable with the current feature set.

They claim so. While their TOS say something else. Legally speaking the TOS are what counts.

If you ordered within their return period return it. Besides that, wait, at the moment

The updated blog post does change the legal position they have maneuvered themselves in within the EU.

Also,they are basically lying in their post:

We want to make it absolutely clear that all of these claims are entirely false: Bambu Lab will remotely disable your printer ("brick" it). Firmware updates will block your printer’s ability to print.

While:

Due to the importance of these updates, your product may block new print job before the updates is installed, and will immediately provide update notifications to help you understand the related information.

(TOS 7.4)

Additionally the required certificates of course have a expiry date and after that you won't be able to connect outside of developer mode.

Legally, they are also in hot water with their "no support" developer mode at least within the EU. First of all they can't remove support for functions that were present at the time of the sale. Additionally denying support within the warranty period for use that is within the normal use even if developer modes,etc. are used is considered illegal - they can ask Samsung, Google and Sony about their experience in court for those cases, they all failed.

This does not change the legal position they have maneuvered themselves in within the EU.

Also,they are basically lying in their post:

We want to make it absolutely clear that all of these claims are entirely false: Bambu Lab will remotely disable your printer ("brick" it). Firmware updates will block your printer’s ability to print.

While:

Due to the importance of these updates, your product may block new print job before the updates is installed, and will immediately provide update notifications to help you understand the related information.

(TOS 7.4)

Additionally the required certificates of course have a expiry date and after that you won't be able to connect outside of developer mode.

Legally, they are also in hot water with their "no support" developer mode at least within the EU. First of all they can't remove support for functions that were present at the time of the sale. Additionally denying support within the warranty period for use that is within the normal use even if developer modes,etc. are used is considered illegal - they can ask Samsung, Google and Sony about their experience in court for those cases, they all failed.

Are you within the EU?

For everyone in the EU who bought their product within the last two years directly from Bambu Land or from a German reseller:

Stay calm. There is a very highly probability that German customer protection laws will cover your asses - Bambu Lab EU is based in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and German customer protection laws goes beyond EU rules and applies to you.

I am currently working with three other enthusiasts, one being a lawyer -working in a different field, though- to clarify our options and will also talk to a customer protection agency.

Short explanation:

• German customer protection laws enable the customer of any online shop to "check" the sold product for 14d in a way they would check the product at a real world shop. The feature set and sales claims provided at this time do provide the base for finalization of the sale.
• The seller (!= Manufacturer!) has to provide a warranty for two years - for 6 months the burden of prove that the fault was not present at the delivery falls towards the seller, for the remaining time to the buyer. As BL does communicate the chanhe openly this is not an issue.
• BL furthermore claims that some uses fall outside the "intended use". This is completely irrelevant - that is only relevant if they claim that they cannot provide warranty due to use outside the intended use. They still cannot reduce the feature set.
• Which holds more merit is the claim of BL that they are reducing a side feature/unintended feature. This explanation has, in the past, been used a few times in court successfully,but lately it has not been accepted anymore - even App connections for cars have been deemed a "base feature" that might play a significant role in choosing a car. It especially has not merit in cases when this defence is used to force a user to give up their (sensitive) data.
• BL also has a five year update policy in their TOS (which is mostly invalid otherwise,though) - and blocking users from updating if they don't want to loose features and give up data is also very likely a breach of contract.
• There are also GDPR and market law implications that need to be considered.

What does that all mean? What can happen in the end?

It is highly unlikely that this proceedings can change the course of BL - these companies don't give a fuck. But it might force them to basically reverse the sale (you would need to pay them for the actual use, though - but that is miniscule). Of course BL can also close their office in the EU and try to only sell from outside the EU - but that will put a very large crosshair on their back in terms of customs and taxes.

I keep you updated.

Update 21/01/25 Spoke with a customer protection associations lawyer for a short time, the longer answer will follow later. Few key facts:

• The fact that you once could use external tools and control while using cloud connection as well and soon cannot do this anymore is a relevant feature change, that it might affect the base of the sale. Developer mode is not a full replacement for that.
• There are some other issues with Bambu Lab policies, especially their return policies, that will be looked into as they directly contradict German law.

Are you within the EU? If yes, there is a good chance you can force them to return it - they fall under German law as Bambu Lab EU is based in Germany and German consumer protection laws are very strict in that terms.

Proton is and always was sketchy.

A company claiming "Swiss privacy laws" as their base while de facto operating out of the US is highly problematic. Switzerland has the weakest privacy laws of all European countries, has laws in place for extensive intelligence agency placement within their tech companies and has a history of intelligence agency overreach. The USA can easily make companies and executives do what they want due to the whole Homeland security act clusterfuck.

I wouldn't touch then with a ten foot pole if data privacy was ones goal.

The problem is not your own setup - the fact that Intel is still huge in the server market (and very likely will be for a long time as AMD still is not up to their level in some applications) is the concerning issue.

Have a look at mDNS. It's very often the issue here.

If you use home assistant take a look at music assistant, it solves a lot of these issues for free.

Sadly you still need that POS to intially configure it and the occasional update.

That very much sounds like a network problem.

Are both hosts in the same subnet?

Well, we did learn exactly that in school and had a practical demonstration at a museum.

But on a different continent.

Just as a way to soothe the outrage about this POS of an app: A fair share of the problem can be minimised by using Home Assistant and Music Assistant to control the Sonos devices. This way you very rarely need to actually use the app anymore.

Which is good because it's indeed shit.

My current strategy might be a bit over the top,but it works.

I have two main entities that contain data worth backing up - the NAS and to a much smaller extend my Proxmox cluster (which is partly within my house,partly at Hetzner).

User PCs do not have any User data saved, they all work with network drives mapped to the NAS, only irrelevant amounts of data are stored on them that gets backed up via Free File Sync. For the Notebooks I use the same concept as we are using a WG VPN 99,9% of the time anyway,but some important folders get also synched via Free File Sync for offline use if no mobile connection is available.

For proper backups I have basically three classes of data that I maintain: Prio 1: The real real important stuff. Photos of once in a lifetime events, important documents, etc. Prio 2: The stuff you still don't want to loose. All other photos, the scanned documents, home folders, VMs/LXX backups, configurations, etc. Prio3: Everything else,mostly data that could be downloaded again. Easily. Movies, etc.

Prio3 data is currently only living in the NAS and does get backed up once in a while on a external hard drive. It's mainly backed up as I am lazy and in case the NAS craps out I don't want to reload all the stuff...that would take months.

Prio2 data gets backed up fully: For the NAS data: It gets backed up to B2 with versioning according to my needs (usually 3d,2w,3m,1y,but that depends highly on the source). Additionally full external hard drive backups every few weeks. (I would kill to get my hands on a proper tape drive again,I had one back in the day,but it was used and old and died) Some data is also stored on Synology C2 atm,but I will replace that soon with another cloud provider, likely Hetzner.

For Proxmox: Basically the same, but I use TUXIS instead of B2 and Hetzner instead of Synology C2. Additionally I have a old PC with Proxmox backup server which turns on once a week and safes the whole cluster before turning off again. In the future this PC is planned to replace the External hard disk's,but currently hard drive prices are insane.

For the P1 data: Same as above,but it's definitely staying on a second cloud provider. Additionally I also create archive blue ray disk's every few month. (Usually every 4). These go into the safe deposit box at my bank and additionally to a second storage location.

And of course I have detailed instructions about this in my will so even if both my wife and I die my kid can figure it out.

If you install them inside the wall they are basically unnickable. Above the wall they are still fairly resistant,but someone with tools or a teenager with a good kick might get them off.

I looked them up, the 2N Solo which is their baseline variant (can do almost everything the big ones can but does not accept Extension modules) goes on sale here for around 600€.

Doorbirds goe for roughly the same,but are inferior technically.

Ubiquity is around 350€, but requires additional hardware for actual door operations beyond ringing.

Similar Dahuas go for 250€,roughly. Reolink PoE goes for 125€ here...but well,you get a reolink for that...

Both the Dahua and Reolink also require hardware that is included in the 2N and Doorbird.

But yeah, they are a different ballpark than the Reolink,as mentioned. But tbh, I had so many bad experiences with Reolink that I would never ever put them in a critical role (which doorbells are), and avoid everything to even have them on my network.

Yeah,me neither. They once were known under the name Helios as well.

For a long time they focused on large residential buildings,doing elevator control stuff and everything,but they have expanded into the medium-upperclass private market as well. The IP Verso and the IP solo are definitely nice (I have the former). And the installation can absolutely be done by a prosumer - I found it far easier than doorbird or dahua, especially as their wiki is great. They document literally everything.