What are the worst tech purchases you or your family have ever made?
I watched a video recently and wanted to know what other have bought over the years.
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the video version of the echo devices.
A plex lifetime pass. Was okay until the company went crazy. Now I use Jellyfin and I’m happy.
Plex lifetime pass (if you already have it) is still worth it for secure remote access, 2FA login, ease of sharing, and (most important) PlexAmp.
On the flip side, it was one of my best purchases. The sync feature has historically been great and I’ve had over a decade of use out of it for that single payment. I hate every update they make, but Jellyfin clients still don’t have as good of a sync feature and that’s what I use a ton of for traveling.
Yeah, there’s also the big issue with Jellyfin remote access. The TL;DR is that Jellyfin has a few critical “anyone can stream your media without a login” vulnerabilities that mean it should basically never be accessible outside of your LAN. Jellyfin’s devs have openly stated that they have no intentions of ever fixing these, because it would require completely divesting from the Emby fork that the entire project is built upon. And that makes sharing with friends/family really difficult.
Sure, you can use Tailscale (or whatever your preferred VPN is) for personal use. Maybe you’ll even get your immediate family on board. But good luck trying to get your tech-illiterate grandma (who lives 4 hours away) logged in over the phone. And unless she has a router that supports VPN connections, (not likely) she probably won’t be able to get her smart TV on your VPN. Which means she can’t securely access your server from her primary method of viewing media.
With Plex, you simply make the account, sign in, and get access. I even have a burner account that has access to a few of my libraries, so I can log it into my server at friends’ houses without them needing to make their own account.
Luckily, Plex and Jellyfin happily run side-by-side. If you prefer Jellyfin’s UI, then that’s great. You can continue to use it. But please don’t think that it’s secure just because you put it behind a reverse proxy.
Could you please provide some evidence for your statement?
The TL;DR is that Jellyfin has a few critical “anyone can stream your media without a login”
I mean, we can just look at the official GitHub’s list of security issues to find a few of them really quickly. And note that many of the previous security issues they have “closed” were only due to 120 days of inactivity, not because they were actually fixed.
Anyone who says Jellyfin is secure enough to put on the internet is either grossly misinformed, or outright lying. Lemmy has a lot of apologia for FOSS, and Jellyfin is one of the worst offenders. Many users will be quick to comment “lol my instance has been port forwarded for years and has been fine” like it’s a valid security audit. I love FOSS. What programmers are able to do in their free time, just because they see a need and want to fill it, is honestly amazing. It’s a modern world wonder. But that doesn’t mean we should excuse bad security practices, or encourage users to relax their threat models just because something is free.
Same. Jellyfin just isn’t there yet unfortunately. Maybe if a comparable plex4kodi existed. The jellyfin one isn’t aa good unfortunately.
I remember when I started using Plex it was great. And then each update made it harder and harder to use, until I was struggling to find my own media. I still don’t understand what was wrong with them. Jellyfin just works. It’s infinitely better.
An early Purism laptop. That was the most lemony lemon that ever lemoned. Components failing, keyboard was shit, the case just fell apart. I think I had to replace it after 6 months because I was tired of its shit.
Anything Samsung. The appliances fail fast and the smartphones are constantly getting more and more enshittified.
Replaced my samsung phone with a unihertz Atom – Definitely not for everyone, but I love it. With samsung I’d gone from my phones never breaking to two phones that seemed to jump out of my hands and crack if you looked at them funny, so I gave up on the brand and looked for something small and rugged. I swear I could chuck the Atom off a building into concrete and it’d be fine. I do wish there was a newer version to update the software, but you get used to the older interface pretty quick. Hopefully Unihertz will go back to the atom series and make one with linux software, but I was thinking of just buying another and seeing if I can install linux.
I got a SG fe 20 last one. Moving to pixel.
Trying to solve wifi dead spots across my then house. It didn’t have wired conduits, so no ethernet between floors. Went through a series of range-extenders, multiple routers, everything from cheapo no-names, to TP-Links, Netgears, and Apple Airports. All sucked. Terrible reception in all the places that people hung out.
Then mesh routers showed up. Got a 3-pack and never looked back.
Edit: runner-up was an HP Inkjet printer. Every time someone needed a color print, one color ink was either out or dried out.
Damn I know hindsight is 20/20 but I feel like you could have just ran some wires yourself (it’s pretty easy tbh) with how much effort you went through to avoid it.
But yeah I hear you on network stuff in general. I know a little about that stuff and it still is basically magic to me. Sometimes I swear my modem and router just choose to misbehave until I give them a little reset. I think they might be alive…
Have you tried a powerline Access Point like this TP Link Powerline AP?
Haha, yes I actually did get those back then. Didn’t work. Turned out the wiring between floors was really old and there was a lot of noise. Place was also a rental, so I couldn’t drill big holes into floors and walls to draw ethernet.
The thing that ultimately solved it was mesh. It’s worked pretty well since then and on to the new place where wiring is even worse. With mesh repeaters, we can even reach far corners of basement storage.
This worst purchase but entirely my fault. I bought a thrust master t3000 kit off of a website I had found because it was like 200 bucks cheaper than anywhere else. I get the thing in the mail and it’s the EU plug so I had to order another servo motor that was for US outlets
nowadays the wise play would be to move to the EU instead
Working on that now actually.
you’ll have to change your name
I just realized what you were referring to, it’s Eric lol not American Andre. I can see where you got that tho
…to ieuropeandre
sorry I just had to see this joke through. moving on…
Zip drive
An Eink smartphone from a Chinese company: Bigme Hibreak pro. It never worked, I sent I back for repair and they shipped it back to me in the same buggy conditions… Now it lies in a drawer completely frozen and unresponsive…
I bought a 2nd hand MacBook Air with an Intel chip to put Linux on it. Forgot about the T2 chip being a bitch.
surface pro 4 maybe… had swollen battery, yellowish screen, touch/stylus malfunction, charger connection issues, keyboard connection issue, heat/fan grinding noise, etc all right after the warranty just expired (3 years iirc?)
it still does boot and i’ve learnt a lot of computer stuff thanks to it though
Yours still works? Mine died after a couple years. It didn’t even last through university. When people asked me about it I always said I would never recommend it and only kept it because of OneNote and university. I did not replace it with another one when it died in the middle of me studying for an exam.
it still boots, im using it as a pdf viewer rn
The Bosch SmartHome outdoor camera.
The only way to view the stream is through their app and over the cloud, and the recordings are kept in the cloud exclusively. There is no way to use it without the cloud account. Everything is slow, choppy, unreliable and buggy as hell. Replaced it with Frigate running on our homeserver and a proper Hikvision IP camera. Much better quality, viewable from everywhere, much faster, ultra reliable, perfect.
Germany gates UX in my experience.
Solid hardware but Jesus that software
BQ Aquaris E5 Ubuntu Editon
Big flop
Convinced my mum to splash out on an Amstrad Emailer. It looked really cool and could store your phonation, and had emails.
3 months later, my Dad is checking the landline phone bill which is expensive for some reason. Turns out the Amstrad phones a premium rate phone lime every night. Managed to switch it off but then the whole thing stopped working saying it needs to do that to work.
Nowhere did they mention this, or at least it was not clear to both of us. Absolutely dodgy fuckers.
Maybe they shouldn’t have put Lord Sugar in charge.
The Lord Sugar truck that Dave Gorman drove around was gold. So there’s that.
Let’s see… One that comes to mind that I guess is “tech” would be Substance Painter and Designer, back when it was independently owned and had an indie license.
“This will really take my Blender work to the next level. I’m going to LEARN this. Let’s freaking go.” I said, and “invested” like $150 into it.
I’m NORMALLY a FOSS nut, but this software was changing the game! Paint directly on 3d models with smart materials and layers and dynamics‽ AWESOME! Maybe it’s worth paying a chunk of my meager part time income for quality software…
Then comes the email:
Subject: “Substance is joining the Adobe family!”
Then the follow-up to all the pissed off customers:
“Don’t worry, it won’t be subscription only.”
Maybe a month later it’s part of the “cloud” and made subscription only.
I don’t care what’s “iNdUsTry sTaNdArD.” I refuse to engage with Adobe for any reason, and I’d rather put my hard earned money into supporting open source community tools than to ever get rug pulled by some shameless sellout ever again.
I agree with your frustration and dislike of Adobe but you can still get a permanent license through Steam. It is unfortunately an industry standard, only toolbag comes close afaik but it’s still a long way off
EDIT: Yeah, they did finally release a Steam version with a perpetual license. That’s a step in the right direction but I’ve already gotten burnt so bad lol.
You’re right, when it comes to the industry’s “cutting edge” unfortunately the likes of Autodesk and Adobe and their copycats seem to hold the hill.
But know what? I’ve actually quite made peace with the idea that I’m probably never gonna work in the AAA(A?) space where that top of the line cutting edge stuff is absolutely required.
In this case, Material Maker and Blender with some add-ons are providing some wonderfully intuitive materials workflows!
Despite my ambitions, my life just didn’t shake out that way and now people that are at least a decade my junior are far exceeding what I can do, with a lot better training and a back that can handle the long hours. :p (Honestly from some of the stories we’ve heard out of the industry, I feel I dodged a bullet sometimes.)
But yeah…
It’s kinda like when I say I work in Godot and people wanna say “WeLL uNrEaL’s GrApHiCs ThO…”.
They might be right but, ha! Am I, a little indie dev that might work alongside some other indie devs, REALLY gonna be making a project SO incredibly strenuous that it’s gonna break anything less than the full might of Unreal?! Probably not. :p
(Power to whatever tools people like using of course! The tools don’t make the artist. :) )
I’ve decided to dedicate my study and efforts towards empowering the Rest Of Us ™. The FOSS tool users, the industry’s rejected applicants, the amateurs, the little guys and gals; Especially the ones who are sick of being exploited by tools, employers, and corporations.
And I hope something good comes of it one day. <3
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What happened about the bootloader? Afaik there’s “only” a 7 days waiting time but that is to be done only once, if the serial number is tied to the Xiaomi account that makes the request, the next bootloader unlock has no waiting time.
And devices that run a ROM for the Chinese market only accept a bootloader unlock request from a Chinese IP address
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Wow good to know, that means Xiaomi is dead for me now.
2000 devices globally is a ridiculously low number
I bought the Poco F1, which i think was the first with a internal heatpipe back then? Well, geared at gamers. Still was fairly powerful 7 years later when it broke. So, there’s that at least.
What app are you using to log the requests?
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And it’s on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.celzero.bravedns/
Awesome, thank you!
I used to go for Xiaomi phones but I stopped because I had too many issues with the OS. The amount of times it would close an app almost as soon as it leaves the screen was too much, tried every setting ever to fix until I just starting doing 2FA with a floating/split screen.
8 years ago the OS was one of the best, 3 years ago it was one of the worst, not sure how it is now.
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