I have two pieces of paper from my time in post-secondary education. One says information technology, the other says business. I’ve worked in an IT field for well over 10 years in a B2B capacity. I’ve had to handle cost/benefit and ROI arguments with customers, and justify having them spend incredible amounts for their own good.

Are we done dick measuring about what we think we know?

Listen, we’re not going to agree on this. I couldn’t give any fewer shits if you do or not. Bluntly, I’m unbothered.

Good day to you sir.

I have a very good knowledge of business operations.

They already offered Plex pass to earn their income. Plex is an extremely price elastic product, given that alternatives like jellyfin exist. They are taking features away, and charging people if they don’t want to lose those features. That’s a really good way to piss off your existing userbase (or customer base). Better would be to offer something new, and charge for that. Keep existing products at the same cost, but have “better” products at a premium. You won’t get a huge number of people buying the extended product, but it will likely be more new paying users than how many you would get with the crap they’re doing now, and they wouldn’t lose any customers in the process.

When you understand the social and economic factors here, this is a super idiotic move. When you’re only looking at how many dollars you can extract from the customer base, this is a golden idea… I mean, it will fail, but it looks golden if you’re only looking at the money numbers.

I would question whether you know how a business works (or whether Plex does, for that matter).

As far as I’m concerned, Plex failed to read the room. They were already walking a fine line with the people in a legal grey area, which comprised a good amount of their customer base (those that are sharing media at least). There’s a nontrivial number of people who share media that are rather paranoid with reason. Nobody wants the RIAA/MPAA to have any reason to investigate what you are doing on the Internet. We all know how well that goes from the whole Napster thing. So now than a few are almost tinfoil hat level of paranoid. Many have already jumped ship to jellyfin or something similar. The rest are either unconcerned, not paying attention, or simply don’t care. I would argue that the numbers of people who run servers currently that host content using Plex, that are not looking at alternatives because of this, is pretty damned low.

Plex alienated the group that brought everyone into their umbrella. When the people who host media entirely abandon their product because of this shit, their client base vaporizes.

Can’t have a product or company with no clients. At least, not for long.

I am also a Plex pass person. Multiple times over in fact. I actually have a dedicated account for my server administrator that’s separate from the account I use to watch content. Both have Plex pass lifetime.

I’ve been familiar with this coming down the pipeline for a while and because I have Plex pass, I too, am unaffected, as are my users.

At the same time: here is a piece of software that I paid for. It’s “server” software, sure, but it’s just a software package. What it does isn’t really relevant. The fact is that it processes data stored on my systems, processing by my systems, using my hardware, and sends that data over the Internet, using the Internet connection I pay for separately, and delivers that data directly to the people I’ve designated as capable of doing so.

The only part of this process that Plex, the company, has any involvement in, is limited to: issuing an SSL certificate, managing user accounts and passwords, and brokering where to find data (pointers to my systems).

You can get a free SSL certificate from let’s encrypt. User accounts, authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA), is a function of pretty much everything that you remotely connect to, whether a Windows SMB/cifs share, your email, even logging into your own local computer regardless of OS… And honestly, brokering the connection isn’t dissimilar to how torrent trackers work, DNS or a goddamned IP address punched into a browser.

They’re offering shockingly little for what they’re asking, and the only thing that’s on the list that would be costly in the slightest is having a DNS name for the server (registration of the domain, DNS services, etc). And given the scale that they’re doing these things at, the individual costs per name is literally pennies per year.

This is not a good look at all.

I have domain names coming out of my ears. I’m tempted to buy one more and just offer to anyone that wants it, to have a subdomain name under that to run their Plex alternative on, so you can get a let’s encrypt SSL certificate, and stay safe on the Internet. I don’t want the feds snooping into what totally legal Linux ISOs are being shared.

I just don’t know how to program at all, so I have no idea how I would go about setting up a system for that. The concept would be to automate it, and have people create an account, then request a DNS name under one of my DNS domains, and have a setting if you want it to have an A record, AAAA record, or cname (if you have a ddns setup). Once the request is in, it would connect to be DNS provider and add the record for you.

The part I’d want to have as a check on the system is to make sure that you’re hosting jellyfin or something from the address you submit, to prevent people from using it for unrelated purposes; but even with that… Do I care of people do that? Probably not. I would limit how many addresses you can have per account.

From the wording, it looks like they’re just going to georestrict their content to places that are not Turkey.

Far from a problem, unless of course, your primary following is from Turkey; or that’s where you live.

I don’t blame bluesky here, they operate internationally, and they have to obey the laws of the locations they operate in. Personally I’m wondering what kind of Internet posts are restricted in Turkey? Who has laws to say you can, or cannot say things on the Internet? Besides… I guess, China, and obviously illegal things like CP…

Were they posting CP?

IDK, I’ve never used bluesky. I barely used xitter, back when it was relevant, if I were to use anything as a replacement it would be Mastodon.

Anyways.

Narrator: they didn’t.

I can likely fall into some version of a category of learned professional. IMO, it’s fine, many of us have made our migration to Lemmy. Reddit can burn.

I’m not sure they’re going to be able to give those things away.

Seems to me, at this point, this is a bit like owning anything with a swastika on it in 1946.

Honestly: leave Reddit to the bots.

Anyone who is still there after all the bullshit, well, I would argue that either they’re oblivious, or some kind of bootlicker, either way, we are probably better off without them.

On an unrelated note, I hope Luigi gets Justice. I mean, he won’t, but… I can hope.

The just outcome for Luigi is to acquit him. He acted in the best interest of the people. He was protecting and serving the people. He’s a better enforcement officer than any LEO I’ve ever met.

Best of all, he wasn’t tasked with doing it. Nobody asked him to, nor did anyone pay him for his efforts. He’s a hero of the people. IMO, his actions, while extreme, are on par with someone who saves a person from a burning car, or picks up a victim and drives them to the hospital so they can get to the care they need more quickly. Luigi just did it on a much broader scale. Here’s this guy that’s preventing people from getting to the care they need. He’s like a bouncer for a hospital. So when an injured patent rolls up and the bouncer says “no” to providing care, it’s reasonable to remove that bouncer by any means necessary to save the people that he’s blocking from getting the care they need.

Yes, he used methods that are unconventional. Yes, he probably shouldn’t have. The outcome is the same. He moved the needle towards good.

While I can sympathize with those that lost their father/brother/husband/son/etc. I can’t sympathize with the man that was removed from blocking critical care to those who needed it, paid for it, and wanted it.

Anyone in charge at any US insurance company: they’re is blood on your hands. Do the right thing, or Luigi won’t be the last martyr to go down for the good of the people.

Patron saint of justice.

You’re not wrong, but you’re getting down voted… Lemmy, you crazy.

Everyone is allowed an opinion.

In my opinion, when discussion doesn’t work, action is required, and sometimes that action is wacking a dude to prove a point, or simply to remove the harm they’re causing to society.

I’ll give an example. Hitler.

Do I need to say more?

This. He’s basically a martyr at this point.

Luigi reminded the people that we have power. We don’t need to be subservient to the whims of corporate interests. We can choose to go a different way. He’s in jail but millions of people who are inspired by him are roaming free, any of which could become the next Luigi, and wack some CEO who is devoid of empathy or ethics (which is all of them). Anyone could be the perpetrator, anyone could be the target.

It’s like a large chunk of the USA is now part of anonymous. Expect us.

(And for anyone who binds anonymous with 4chan, you don’t understand anonymous)

I know a lot of people who use and like brother printers. Years ago the go to was HP, then it was Xerox for a while when they had decent small format printers, but they seem to have gone back to their roots of large multi function printers for the most part and priced themselves out of most markets. They’re still good, but you pay for the name.

Toshiba’s printing division was absorbed by Xerox, no help there. Dell… Has printers? I guess?

Brother is kind of the stand out. Everything else you can buy as a consumer is either HP, which went completely nuts on the whole “genuine” printer ink/toner, which is why a lot of people ran away screaming. The quality of the printers declined as they tried to force people into, what is basically printer ink as a service. Stupid.

But yeah. Bother is a decent mix of functional, affordable, and being low on the bullshit of using a printer. … That is, as long as the article isn’t a sign of things to come…

I’m hoping that by the time I need a replacement for what I have right now, there will be something open source… Cries for an open alternative to the current printer market have been ongoing pretty much anytime printers are mentioned. I expect someone is, or will be developing something to the effect of an open source hardware printer.

Quick story, I bought a bubble jet printer for college in the mid 2000s, with all the fixings.

I set it up and got it working and promptly never used it. Almost all of my courses allowed either digital submissions or provided the printouts you actually needed, like course work that you would fill out. So I basically wasted my money, especially considering I could always use the large format printers at the school for like 5 cents per page.

Anyways. I did a few test prints and everything was fine and I got to work in college. Almost every time I needed the printer in order to actually print something, I more or less had to go and buy new ink. At first I was like “I guess I printed more than I thought?” But it kept happening. I would print maybe twice a year. Eventually I stopped using it as a printer (it was a multifunction, so I kept it as a scanner), and just used the printers at school. It was cheaper, considering the fact that printer ink is worth more by volume than basically any other substance; and while I was only buying a small amount, maybe $20 or so (adjusted for inflation, this is probably like $50 today) each time, it was a lot for a broke college student.

After college, I picked up a random laser printer, the printer cost more up front (I got another multifunction, but this time with a network port because I’m a nerd). I basically never bought any toner for it, given how little I had to print year over year, and it always was ready to go. I had it for years until a new windows version (maybe the OG Windows 10? Maybe Windows 8/8.1) made the drivers stop working and the manufacturer wouldn’t make drivers for that model that worked with the new requirements from Windows… I did a little print server for a bit to give it some more longevity, but ultimately it had to go to the IT storage in the sky.

Why thermal? Seems odd, but alright.

I recommend laser for just about everyone.

Don’t print much? Get a laser. Otherwise your ink will dry out and you’ll have to get new ink every time you want to print.

Print a lot? Laser. Super reliable, can do tens of thousands of sheets before there’s a problem, maybe more.

In fact, the only time I’d recommend an ink printer is for color accurate work like photo printing, and if you’re not using photo paper for it, then there’s not really much of a point, is there?

I used to think bubble jet/ink jet was the shit, then I started working in IT professionally and discovered the truth.

Just buy a laser printer folks. Don’t bother with all the rest of this shit. If you want/need inkjet, then you already know you need it and why. If you’re not sure, get a laser. You’ll pay wayyyyyy less on materials to keep it running

1000x this.

We’ve got all this figured out for 3D printers with all kinds of cool tools to make the job easier, and yet, take away a dimension and there’s crickets?

The hell?

Let’s make a 3D printable 2D printer.

You see, I don’t think it would invalidate any laws… I suppose it would be subject to whatever judge is making the call, but I would imagine that any judge that’s rational and logical would take into effect the concept behind the law, not just it’s specific wording as it currently applies.

I hope that anyone looking at a law, written when that specific body of water was named “the Gulf of Mexico” and determine that, since it was called that at the time of the law being passed, that the law applies to the body of water that is, or was, known as “the Gulf of Mexico” at the time it was written, and the law continues to apply to that physical place, regardless of any changes in name.

But that might be a bit too logical, and I might be expecting a lot from the US Justice system… Or any Justice system for that matter.

Ah. Thanks. I’m not American so I’m not exposed to that kind of stuff on the regular.

Today I learned. Thank you again.

Oh you got me good eh?

Why would the name have any bearing on the laws that govern what can, and can’t be done there?

This is so freaking dumb I can’t even.

I support this.

But we should probably at least have a conversation with Mexico about it, since something like half of their country borders it. IDK, I failed geography.