Claude was great, but I did put a fair amount of my own time and (non-printing-specific) expertise into this. OTOH, sure, I wouldn’t be asking for a million dollars.
Can you elaborate on how using the network sharing features of CUPS would let you achieve the same thing (printing to old USB printers) in any major web browser?
> I just don’t think I fully understand what you’re suggesting.
Sure, sure.
Like I said, given your commercial (and closed-source) aspirations, I'm happy to consult on your project as a paid contractor. Doing work for free on a closed-source for-profit project is neither interesting nor in my interest.
> And if you're not going to spell it out due to your morals...
Nah, this isn't a moral issue.
I'm willing to do free labor for an open-source project (whether or not it's a commercial project), as that labor benefits everyone. I'm unwilling to do free labor on a closed-source project, as that labor only benefits the entity that owns the code. This goes double for a commercial closed-source project, because in that case I don't see a cent of the money that the code owner gets from my labor. [0]
If you think that wanting to get a piece of the fruits of one's labor is a moral issue, you have a very strange relationship with work.
You could bridge the ipp server of cups over webrtc to a native listener that talks to the usb port. Webrtc to localhost might raise some red flags, but could be a neat alternative to the chrome requirement. Use at the very least some hmac key pairing to ensure others can't easily piggyback on the listener. I just saved you a few bucks.
As of July 7, 2024 the Gutenprint project has formally deprecated MacOS support. This means that no further MacOS-compatible binaries will be produced.
Gutenprint has not had an active MacOS maintainer for over three years, and the remaining developers lack the technical ability to produce MacOS binaries, much less undertake the substantial amount of work necessary to produce, test, and support binaries on newer (post-Mojave/10.14) MacOS releases.
It looks like it's just because they had no way to test, and bandwidth to deal with it. But should still mostly work, once whatever issue (that sounds like app notrization) is fixed.
It seems like the better option would have been to fix whatever was blocking them just two years ago, rather than this wild rube goldberg machine of a Linux VM emulated in a browser tab.
I mean, anyone is welcome to do just that! But I guess coding Rube Goldberg machines in JS (to push the boundaries of the web) is a thing I really kind of enjoy.
Interesting suggestion: I guess that would have been possible. On the other hand I think this is a more general solution, and it does minimal reinventing-the-wheel.
It doesn’t much change your calculations, but if you charge at home in the UK (we trail a cable across the pavement with a low-profile cover) then the electricity _is_ all but free.
We pay 7.5p/kWh for 6 hours overnight, but we also get £5 per month back (if we charge at least 10 hours) in return for having charging interrupted for up to an hour each night when the grid has least capacity. I drive about 7000mi/year, which means I’m paying about 1p/mile on average for home charging.
(The £5/month is from the charger manufacturer, SyncEV).
In the UK, having a credit card is an overwhelmingly good move even if you never use the facility for credit. You can set up a direct debit to pay it off in full every month, making it effectively a debit card, but you get what are known as Section 75 protections on all purchases. So if you’re buying online and the firm goes bust (or you for any other reason don’t receive your goods), the credit card firm has to compensate you in full. For this reason I always make larger online purchases on credit card.
reply