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autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The PC and print biz is currently facing a class-action lawsuit (from 2.42 in the video below) regarding allegations that the company deliberately prevented its hardware from accepting non-HP branded replacement cartridges via a firmware update.

When asked about the case in a CNBC interview, Lores said: “I think for us it is important for us to protect our IP.

And what we are doing is when we identify cartridges that are violating our IP, we stop the printers from work[ing].”

Lores said of customers who use a third-party cartridge: "In many cases, it can create all sorts of issues from the printer stopping working because the ink has not been designed to be used in our printer, to even creat[ing] security issues.

HP has long banged the drum [PDF] about the potential for malware to be introduced via print cartridges, and in 2022, its bug bounty program confirmed that third-party cartridges with reprogrammable chips could deliver malware into printers.

Sadly, Lores’s protestations were somewhat undermined by the admission that the company’s business model depends – at least in part – on customers selecting HP supplies for their devices.

The original article contains 438 words, the summary contains 189 words. Saved 57%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

LWD , (edited )

deleted_by_author

    •
    dual_sport_dork ,
    @dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

    HP is intentionally getting this twisted in the hopes that we won’t notice. But too bad; we noticed.

    The only possible way for a “virus” to be embedded in an ink cartridge is because there is software (or firmware, I guess) in that cartridge. The only reason there is software in an ink cartridge in the first place is because HP needs it to be there for their own nefarious purposes, to wit attempting to prevent you from using third party cartridges, and also to lock you out of using cartridges that may still be full of ink under their stupid “instant ink” scam.

    Without that, the cartridge would just be a box of ink which is all it actually needs to be. HP could have avoided this entire fiasco by… not putting dumbshit DRM firmware in their cartridges in the first place.

    LWD , (edited )

    deleted_by_author

    •
    dual_sport_dork ,
    @dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world avatar

    People say that, but…

    I had a Canon Pixma ip5000 back in the day that had ink cartridges with no electronics in them. For ink level sensing there was an LED and photodiode built into the carriage that the cartridges went into, in the printer itself. Not in the cartridges. They were transparent plastic, so the machine could just shine through and determine when ink was running low. For its usage gauge, it just calculated it based on print output vs. the volume of a new cartridge, assuming you put a full cartridge into it when you told it so. Yes, this meant you could also fool it by telling it you’d installed a new cartridge when you hadn’t, but it would still figure it out right away if you put a truly empty one in.

    And this worked just fine. No problems at all with that system. I used and abused that printer for years, doing volume printing for work with it (it could do 8.5x11 borderless!) until it just plain wore out. Probably after hundreds of thousands of pages.

    So no, I really don’t think having chips running arbitrary code in a goddamn ink cartridge is actually necessary in any way.

    bstix ,

    Crazy idea here: How about not monitoring the ink at all?

    Why does the printer need to know? It’s not like it’s going to explode from not having fresh ink anyway. Just put the ink in a visible container where the user can look and see if it being empty is the cause of a shitty print.

    I’d buy any printer that doesn’t attempt to monitor the ink.

    jqubed ,
    @jqubed@lemmy.world avatar

    Maybe so people know to buy a cartridge so it’s on hand before the one runs out, so you’re not having to run to the office supply store in the middle of an important print job? But that’s more of a convenience thing, not necessary.

    Buddahriffic ,

    Yeah, just make it work like a car’s fuel tank. It has a gauge to say how much is in it. It has a hole so you can add more. Some cars will guess how far you can drive, give or take, based on how much fuel is in the tank. If the fuel gets very low, a more obvious warning will pop up in case you weren’t watching your gauge. But otherwise it just keeps driving in the meantime and if your car needs high octane and you give it low, it will try to run it anyways and if it fucks up the engine, then that’s on the user.

    SeaJ ,

    If it is visible to the user, that means light is hitting it and helping degrade it. Given how rarely people prove these days, you are more likely to end up with a gunked up cartridge.

    jay9 ,

    Actually with some print heads they will be damaged if there is no ink

    _haha_oh_wow_ ,
    @_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Do yourself a favor and buy a Brother laser jet.

    SeaJ ,

    They could avoid the possibility of a virus by not having chips in them. Pretty simple fix.

    SnotFlickerman ,
    @SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    “Every time a customer buys a printer, it’s an investment for us. We are investing in that customer, and if that customer doesn’t print enough or doesn’t use our supplies, it’s a bad investment.”

    They literally can’t help themselves. They’ve gone from treating their employees like an investment vehicle, where if it doesn’t perform well enough, they stop investing in it, and they’re fully onto doing that to their customers as well. (They aren’t exactly actually investing in their employees either. They consider an employees low pay an “investment,” in the employee. Nevermind the employee can’t afford an apartment on their own on their pay.)

    You know how little your boss thinks of you and how disposable they think you are?

    Yeah, well, they think that about the customers now, too.

    “You can easily be replaced with another customer who prints more,” is what they are saying to themselves.

    Chiyo ,

    The company I work for has a contract with HP to provide and service the printers. My department uses a printer everyday. In addition to internal use we print receipts and documents for clients who sometimes only have a few minutes to wait. We have been told that our printers are going to be removed because we don’t print enough. Our page count isn’t high enough to justify the cost from HP, despite the fact that we literally can’t do our jobs without them. The result of this is that we’ll have to walk the floor until we find an available cloud printer, no matter how far away or inconvenient it is. For corporations it’s all about the numbers. Metrics, budget, etc. How it affects their employees doesn’t matter to them.

    dumpsterlid ,

    Imagine working high up in this company and not wanting to jump off a bridge every time you get off of work. Psychos.

    spacecowboy ,

    Don’t buy HP printers. Buy Brothers instead. They’re a better product anyways.

    dan1101 ,

    For now anyway. Enshittification strikes too many products eventually.

    itsJoelle ,

    Which is making me sad. 3d printing is so open atm, but I wouldn’t be surprised if enshittification will take place in this space in my lifetime.

    lemann ,

    That’s mostly going to be in the hands of Bambu I think, they only recently just allowed users to flash custom firmware onto the X1.

    If Prusa doesn’t come back with a strong challenger we will be in trouble IMO. They have that amazing corexy that rivals the Bambu in performance (but not price!) but for a lot of people it’s too big anyway sadly

    evranch ,

    There’s a huge world of clone printers, aftermarket mainboards, hotends, extruders etc. that doesn’t look like it’s going away.

    Some manufacturers may go closed but it’s way too easy to build your own printer for it to be a big concern in the FDM world.

    Resin on the other hand already has lots of custom slicers, firmware etc. probably because there’s a lot less mechanics and a lot more screen. But I’m not sure of the future of consumer resin anyways, a lot of people are realizing how toxic that unlabelled Chinese product really is.

    frezik ,

    I had someone a while back arguing that FDM printers were hopelessly toxic and resin printers would be the only ones on the market within a year. Naturally, this was well over a year ago.

    Resin printers have their uses, but man, they are a mess to use.

    frezik ,

    It sorta did, but pulled back. DaVinci tried selling printers that had chips in the filament spools and used the same razer blade business model as low end inkjets. Anet also sold printers that cut too many corners and they often caught fire.

    Then Creality made the Ender 3. I unironically think it’s a brilliant design. It cuts corners just enough to be cheap, but not so much that it’s useless garbage. They had two issues early on: lack of thermal runaway protection in the firmware, and a bad connector to the power supply. Both were fixable by end users, and both have long been fixed in shipping models.

    At the same time, companies like Prusa refused to join in that race to the bottom. Good for them. If you’re an established player like that and already have a reputation for quality, never get involved in a race to the bottom. That’s how you become what HP is now.

    pearsaltchocolatebar ,

    I’m just now having to replace my brother printer (HL-2170W) I bought in 06, because the NIC is toast.

    The printer still works great, but duplex printing sure would be nice.

    LWD , (edited )

    deleted_by_author

    •
    pearsaltchocolatebar ,

    I haven’t had any reason to print in color for like 20 years. I’m sure many consumers are the same.

    If I do need to print color, I’ll pay $0.10 at UPS or the library or whatever to print it off.

    Treczoks ,

    But have a close look at the model you are buying. We recently noticed that the relatively cheap Epson Ecotank we bought for our daughter is a bit difficult to maintain. You simply have no access to the printheads.

    Gerudo ,

    Every inkjet printer on this planet has a choice. Cheap ink, accessible printheads, expensive. You have to pick one.

    Certain Hp? Expensive cartridges but new print heads with every cart. Epson ecotank? Cheap ink but non replaceable printheads. High-end printers? Insanely priced printheads and ink.

    The only way out is laser.

    jelloeater85 ,
    @jelloeater85@lemmy.world avatar

    2170 crowd represent!!!

    Those things run forever and cost nothing to run.

    pearsaltchocolatebar ,

    I think I’ve only bought 3x toner cartridges, and one of those got lost because I shook the old one and it just kept working for a year or two.

    monkeyman512 ,

    If it still has working USB you can hook it up to a $10 raspberry pi with wifi to act as a print server. I can understand if that’s a more ambitious tech project than your ready to take on.

    user224 ,
    @user224@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    There also used to be network printer adapters in the past. For example, the Belkin F8T030 Bluetooth AP. Yes, Bluetooth AP. I’d like something like that just for fun. Perhaps not this one specifically, as it only supports BT-LAP out-of-the-box and requires firmware upgrade for BT-PAN. Good luck finding firmware for a niche product from 2003.

    But anyway, perhaps something like that (the printer part) is still made.

    LifeInOregon ,

    The old Apple AirPort Express could turn any USB printer into a networked printer.

    projectsquared ,

    Absolutely this. Find them online for $10 all day.

    pearsaltchocolatebar ,

    I’m a systems engineer, so it would be a short project for me. My homelab router could run the print server, but the USB port is currently powering my pi hole.

    I feel like there would be some way to rig an esp32 or similar micro controller to do the same thing (pis can be scarce atm

    mosiacmango ,

    A powered plugin usb hub would likely be easier.

    pearsaltchocolatebar ,

    But not as fun as making my own.

    mosiacmango , (edited )

    Entertainment always wins over efficiency.

    pearsaltchocolatebar ,

    Security too. I dont trust 90% of internet connected devices.

    frezik ,

    Rpi stock issues are well behind us. You can buy them straight up now. Even the 1GB RPi4.

    Esp32 may not have enough RAM to buffer large prints, especially if there’s a lot of graphics. It is possible to give it up to 4MB of external RAM, but that’s still not much.

    Pi Pico can do a 16MB external RAM chip. That’s starting to be adaqute.

    I had an HP 5si for a while with 20MB of internal RAM. It struggled with Postscript printing–could only buffer and print one page at a time. Did fine with HP’s own PDL drivers, though.

    pearsaltchocolatebar ,

    I still had some trouble getting the Zero 2Ws, but a lot of sellers still have a limit of 1 per order.

    I’ll probably use my Zero W for the print server once I replace the controller for my snake’s enclosure with a 2.

    chemicalwonka ,
    @chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    Brother is just a little less greed than HP, nothing more

    checkforupdates ,

    They’re about as bad. But a new set of ink cartridges and they immediately go “empty” within two months even if you’re not using them. Switch to a laser jet.

    Mereo ,

    Every time a customer buys a printer, it’s an investment for us. We are investing in that customer, and if that customer doesn’t print enough or doesn’t use our supplies, it’s a bad investment.

    Brother, for the love of anything holy, please do not follow HP’s path.

    Nindelofocho ,

    I wonder if I can 3D print parts for and make a reliable 2D printer

    GenderNeutralBro ,

    In other words: “Our business model is bad and I feel smug about it.”

    mozz ,
    @mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

    In case anyone cares, I'm sitting next to a Brother MFC-J1205W. It cost a couple hundred bucks, came with all full ink cartridges, and makes absolutely gorgeous color prints in addition to obviously being fine for printing-type printing. I've bought more ink for it once and it was $47 for every color of color cartridge with tons of ink inside them (I was out of yellow; I still have the cyan and magenta cartridges, and I've never had to buy more black). I'm extremely happy with it so far.

    Before that, I had an Epson Workforce 545. It was pricey but it lasted, no joke, about 15 years, and worked well for the first ten and acceptably after that (not producing beautiful documents any more but still perfectly functional for printing). It only died because someone spilled sauce into it. It was a little more greedy on the ink than the Brother is.

    Edit: Oh, and to my knowledge neither of these printers ever tried to tell me that I needed to install their special rootkit software in order to get the full experience of their printer. I just plug them in and they print. I feel like that's a selling point in our blighted modern age.

    kaitco ,

    I care, and I’ve added this to my list for when it comes time to grab a new printer.

    I have my HP from about 15 years ago that has been trudging along for the two times a year that I need to print, but that thing was from another era and once it goes, there will not be another HP printer in my future.

    pepperprepper ,

    I have always had a conspiracy theory that the ink management requirements are set by national security input. All printers have a yellow dot pattern added to every print to identify the printer by a forensics team. I wonder if this is why the ink landscape is so shifty. They want to make sure those dots get printed. My thought on why you can’t print black and white when you are only missing colored ink.

    db2 ,

    The conspiracy theory falls apart with black only printers. 🤷

    _haha_oh_wow_ ,
    @_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works avatar

    HP is a bad investment

    Burn_The_Right ,

    HP wants to pay employees in company scrip.

    inclementimmigrant ,

    Guess I’m fucking very proud to be some asshole corporation’s “bad investment”. I’ll wear that title with a huge smile on my face if I ever buy one of their shitty products.

    Brother laser printer for life*

    *At least until they go full anti-consumer and my now almost decade old printer dies.

    jelloeater85 ,
    @jelloeater85@lemmy.world avatar

    Plus the work great with after market stuff.

    forrgott ,

    That’s not how investments work. If I put my money into purchasing a printer, I invested in that purchase. Not the other way around. Ffs

    DeadNinja ,
    @DeadNinja@lemmy.world avatar

    Excuse me - if I bought your product and paid for it, in what universe am I not investing into you, and instead you are investing into me??

    HP is a steaming pile of shit.

    user224 ,
    @user224@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    Because they sell the printers at loss, expecting you to buy their overpriced ink, continually earning them money for years.

    Sounds like a subscription to be honest.

    SlopppyEngineer ,

    They want to make it a subscription that starts automatically when you buy the printer. No payment or the linked credit card expires, no more printing. Keep on paying for that subscription each month even if you don’t print a single page.

    Archer ,

    Here was I, thinking printers couldn’t get worse

    mosiacmango ,

    HP literally has that already. They call their dystopian product “Instant ink.”

    SlopppyEngineer ,

    And they’re fuming because they can’t force this down the throat of every “bad investments”. Not yet anyway.

    user224 ,
    @user224@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    But they’re really trying with HP+ printers that come with a 3 month trial of Instant Ink. And it’s not like you lose the ability to use 3rd party cartridges, because those HP+ printers already come locked down from factory. Those HP+ printers also have extra REQUIREMENTS: HP Account and internet connection.

    Imagine if you needed internet connection and some account to control your lights. Oh, Philips Hue changed their ToS, so now you do.

    SlopppyEngineer ,

    Why internet of things is a bad idea for 500, Alex.

    ReallyActuallyFrankenstein ,

    I know we assume they’re following the “razor blade” model but I actually find it hard to believe the printers are sold at a loss given how cheap it is to produce at this point.

    Unless by “loss” we’re saying “less than HP thought it could extract.”

    WhatAmLemmy ,

    They’re absolutely not producing them at a loss. The loss is only in their projections and expectations to price gouge their customers.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    I just looked. You can get an HP Deskjet on Amazon for $40. They are producing those at a loss and expecting people to pay for their bullshit ink subscriptions.

    frezik ,

    Right. There isn’t a printer under $150 that anyone should even consider. If you can’t afford the upfront cost, then you won’t be able to afford the ink of the “cheap” end of the market.

    More people should consider not owning a printer at all and using a FedEx print shop or some such. I get the convenience argument for having one, but consider it.

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    I invested $150-200 on a Brother laser printer a very long time ago. Like we’re talking USB 1.0 era long time ago. It still works just fine. I’ve had to replace the toner cartridge once. Those things are workhorses. They will last until the sun goes out. Get one of those if you need a printer. It will still be compatible with your OS, the quality will be all you’ll likely ever need, and you don’t even have to worry about getting a new one because you can get an ancient one on eBay for a very low price and it will still be fine. All you’re missing is color and even if you print a lot, like you said, go to FedEx if you need color because it will probably be cheaper than ink anyway.

    RatherBeMTB ,

    The real question here is where are the Chinese printers?! I mean, it’s a big market, why aren’t they getting into it?

    FlyingSquid ,
    @FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

    Xiaomi makes a couple of expensive standard inkjets, but mostly they make photo printers. That’s the only one I can think of.

    frezik ,

    It’s really hard to break into it. Being accurate enough to print at 300dpi is very difficult, and that’s not particularly impressive. If it’s color, then the problems are multiplied. You have to precisely align four different print heads (minimum), and the ink needs to be mixed just right for accurate colors.

    This is also why you don’t see open source 2d printers like you do for 3d printers. On the surface, adding a third dimension seems like it’d make things more complicated, but 3d printers don’t need the level of accuracy that 2d printers do.

    RatherBeMTB ,

    But I would think TVs and microchips are more complicated than printers. And those two have been cracked by the Chinese.

    Reverendender ,

    How small and shriveled this man’s soul must be. He should take a lesson from Ferdinand the Bull, and enjoy smelling the flowers for a while.

    qjkxbmwvz ,

    In grad school I picked up a free used HP LaserJet. It had Ethernet, and could use generic/off brand cartridges. Yeah it was big and noisy but it was an awesome workhorse and it Just Worked (with out-of-the-box CUPS/Linux support too, IIRC).

    How the mighty have fallen.

    calypsopub ,

    Yeah, my first color inkjet was an HP and it was an absolute workhorse. I had a graphic design business and I remember printing 1500 4-page newsletters for a client who couldn’t wait for a regular printing press due to a deadline. I stayed up all night feeding paper into that thing and had to change the black ink cartridge twice, for about $50 each, during the whole ordeal. I loved that printer. When it finally died after 15 years or so, I tried to find another HP that could do the job. What a mistake. Current models are hot garbage.

    So now I have an Epson Ecotank which I bought three years ago and literally have not yet had to purchase additional ink past the first set of bottles that came with it. Sadly, the photo printing quality is not as good as the old HP, but for my purposes it is perfect.

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