Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youāll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Credit and/or blame to David Gerard for starting this.)
So I have two laser printers, a cute little HP one and an old Lexmark. The former works mostly OK, but requires fiddling* to get it working on Linux, and prints things smaller than their actual size. The latter is also good enough to be useful, but leaves streaks on page and is quite low on toner. Replacing the photoconductor and toner is just about expensive enough to justify consideration of buying a new printer altogether instead.
So anyway, I might be in the marker for a new printer, which reminded me of one of the best pieces of tech journalism of this decade . I also noticed it has been followed by sequels for subsequent years. Also a rare example of LLM use I can approve of, even if having to fight fire with fire (or search engines with slop) is a bit saddening.
A little offtopic (or I guess itās almost ontopic for NotAwfulTech), but I found myself considering a color printer and seems that LED printers are the new hotness for that. Since the top results when searching āled vs laser color printerā are mind-numbing slop, I thought Iād ask if anyone here has experience with LED printers. Any typical pitfalls to watch out for? Is Brother still the least worst brand for them?
* For the curious, the printer requires a plugin called HPLIP. My distro has an automated installer for it in its repositories, but the installerās Python code is not compatible with newest Python versions. Thankfully the fix only involves changing a
locale.formattolocale.format_stringin one file and ignoring some warnings about invalid escape sequences. The URL for automatically dowloading the plugin from HP website is also empty, so I had to manually download the.runfile from hplipās sourceforge repository. The filename was also slightly different from what the installer was expecting and the cryptographic signature file was also mandatory, though when the installer tried and failed to download the corresponding key from a keyserver, it let me ignore the signature altogether. I can see how proprietary printer drivers made rms what he is, minus the pro child molestation stuff.brother remains the only brand of printer I donāt regret buying ā some people keep buying new printers and trashing the old ones (which is a bit monstrous) because the starter toner cartridge lasts forever, but Iāve found that the move is to get one of the XL boxes that includes a normal-sized toner cartridge (which should last years) and an extra-large one (I donāt know how long that lasts, I donāt think Iāve had to use mine) along with a printer for much cheaper than the price of the individual parts bought separately.
the other move with brother is to ignore or reset the low toner warning and get almost twice the life out of the cartridge. supposedly the DRM in newer printers might prevent this? which is a damn shame. but the printer wonāt stop you from printing with supposedly low toner either way. older printers also take to third party toner cartridges instantly, though Iāve bought toner so rarely I always went first-party when I did cause the savings didnāt feel too notable.
drivers for brother printers are excellent because they just work and are probably included, without bloatware, in your distro.
I donāt have any experience with modern color printing; I switched entirely to ordering color prints from local photo shops and online bulk printers a long time ago and ended up saving money for how rarely I printed. I havenāt heard too much about LED printers so they might be worth looking into; Iāve heard mixed (but not entirely negative, which is an improvement over plain inkjet!) things about the epson printers that take big tanks of ink ā theyāre somewhat cheaper to run than a plain inkjet (which isnāt hard), but the print heads might become a maintenance nightmare depending on your printing habits.
Canāt offer experience with Brother printers, but Iād throw in Canon as another option ā at least Iāve had a small colour laser from their āi-Sensysā office line for many years now and it still works exactly as well as on the day I bought it, no complaints at all. Also works nicely on Linux (I did install a Canon thing for it, but IIRC it might even work without). Although keep in mind of course this is just a single anecdote with one model from many years ago.
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