I was in the largest 3D printer retailer in the region this weekend, they are fighting with Bambu to send printers back because demand is near zero.
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I haven't seen it mentioned here yet, but software freedom conservancy is doing a fundraiser to bring bambulab to court, any donation from now till half july will be part of the fundraiser: https://sfconservancy.org/donate/
When tf did the verge put up a pay wall?
I'm surprised this isn't a bigger part of the story.
Bambu's authentication is just the client saying "I am Bambu Studio". The server completely trusts that with no additional authentication.
It's like setting up a website with a user login, and if someone puts in "admin" in the username field without a password, the system says "sounds good" and lets you in. And then the website owners getting mad that someone hacked their system.
Blatant incompetence. I can't believe they're using their stupidity as an argument.
Important to note that the license they release their software under explicitly allows users to do exactly that
It’s like setting up a website with a user login, and if someone puts in “admin” in the username field without a password, the system says “sounds good” and lets you in. And then the website owners getting mad that someone hacked their system.
Blatant incompetence. I can’t believe they’re using their stupidity as an argument.
You are right, but technically speaking it would be a crime anyway. It is not that if you leave your door open then entering without permissione is not a crime.
While Bambu Labs obviously is trying to implement some sort of subscribtion model, and they are doing it in a bad faith way, for shitty as the authentication model is it is not an authorization to enter freely.
You are right, but technically speaking it would be a crime anyway. It is not that if you leave your door open then entering without permissione is not a crime.
Leaving the door open and people walking in isn't a crime, unless explicitly mentioned otherwise (may vary on jurisdiction), but faking a login is a lot less denyable than using the same User-Agent as some software (famously a bad marker for authentication).
I don't know where you live, but leaving a door wide open is literally an invitation to "come in" And as far as I understand things correctly, it's been like that for a few thousand years.
What a shit "but both sides" article.
"Bambu said they didn't do something wrong so we must take that into consideration".
It's one of the most transparent and plump "I want to hold my users hostage" in a long time.
And many people warned exactly this would happen. Bambu introduced a closed system into an open source hobby and the parallels to home ink printers were pointed out immediately by the community. Bambu essentially announced this would happen. I‘ve been saying this for years.
And what a community to do it to. The FUNCTIONAL diy techie 2a hippe crowd that strives for freedom.
Like in what universe would somebody with a brain think "ah yes, let me try to pull a fast one on this group, nothing can go wrong"
I don't have a printer, but I'm well acquainted with the people who do have printers, and from all walks of life. That is not a "take it and roll over" crowd.
You might as well try to sell Vietnamese children full priced nikes.
It doesn't even cross their minds. I'm about to leave my current job together with two other seniors because our boss decided we'd turn everything into subscription products. Most of it are forks of open source software running on very basic hardware and we were doing fine with selling working solutions and support. Now every piece of hardware will be subscription based. The customers will own nothing and end up paying triple.
Our boss is baffled that we don't want to do this.
This kinda reminds me of when Sony decided to declare war against people putting Linux on their PS3s. Like, buddy, this isn't someone you can win a war against and you are wasting your time and good will trying to.
That was such a wildly stupid move. They lost a hundred million dollar lawsuit, and also inspired the hardware hacker geohot to breach the PS3s DRM for the first time. The same DRM they had crowed about for 3 years for being "unbreakable." I'm pretty sure he breached it in a week.
Turns out all the nerds just left the PS3 alone because the "other OS" option that shipped Linux with it let them do all the things they wanted to do with the PS3 already, things they bought the $800 console for. Things that sold more consoles!
They burned goodwill, lost hundreds of millions in a lawsuit, lost console sales, lost their anti-piracy talking point, and all for what? To remove easy Linux access for a few thousand niche users who were doing cool shit like making clustered super computers.
Sony had people turning their gaming consoles into SUPER COMPUTERS and instead of shouting to the rafters about how rad they were and basking in some reflected glory, they decided to fuck with them instead.
Idiots, but not a big surprise from the "let's hide rootkits on audio CDs" people.
yeah, a lot of PR effort for Bambu while the reality is slightly different.
An example: they say: we didn't patch the security hole (the user agent "chech") because the user experience would have been affected blablabla...
Well, they introduced this security hole on linux BECAUSE they deployed the new mandatory network "plugin" (that you are forced to use because: it's automatically installed and it's mandatory to print even locally) without providing a working solution for all their linux customers when deploying it.
Yes! They didn't implement a real authentication solution for their own linux implementation AND they didn't answer to their linux customers who had the software broken for MONTHS.
And them providing this user agent hack solution months later allowed anybody to understand how it worked without retro engineering their network plugin (something the article forgot to mention but it was the main attack vector of bambu against the developer threateninghim to go to federal jail, something they also forgot to mention).
Great user experience mindset here. Breaking their printer to introduce a mandatory connectivity plugin (reminder: linux is officially supported on the marketing pages) and threatening those who try to fix it using just what the license allows them to do.
I suspect the DDOS attack they had on their cloud service is more linked to their change of mind regarding this mandatory network plugin.
It could be all the linux client trying to download their network plugin but failing and retrying in loop. That wouldn't surprise me following the user agent choice.
Or people unhappy. After all, they changed the terms of the contract after users bought the printer. Really a Dark Vader style of user experience here!
If you want to avoid this kind of amateurish/parasitic behavior, buy the original: Prusa.
I've one printer from them since many years that I upgrade each few years. Currently, I'm waiting for a sale for the upgrade kit to the Core+
I'm surprised that people are surprised by this. Bambu has clearly telegraphed what kind of assholes they are in the past when they locked down their firmware and local APIs, so this was just expected behaviour IMHO.
Fully agree. This has been discussed for years and most Bambu costumers basically said the risk of your printer being essentially disabled by an update over night was worth it for the quality and low cost of the printer.
A part of me expects Bambu costumers to take this with dignity and move on. They knew the risks after all and are in no position to throw a tantrum after shitting on Prusa for years.
But a different part of me rejects costumer responsibility. It‘s almost always used by bad corporations to shift the blame on the little guys. I want them to fight this. To cause a shit storm that scares off other corporations from trying something similar. It‘s kind of entertaining too. I‘m not gonna lie.
The fact that they have a history and are now more committed than ever to locking down hardware that they don't own is ridiculous. Fuck bambu.
Bamboo started going bad ages ago. This episode is just the last of a long series.
Man I was looking at one of the Bambus to supplement my old Monoprice Maker Select. I was hoping to something with less fuss.
People saying good things about the snapmaker u1. Also have a friend with the centauri carbon and it seems to do well. Don't know about the multi filament setup though, he bought it before the release.