Not saying they couldn't/shouldn't but printers are a nightmare hellscape and it's a miracle, mostly of HP's marketing department, that they're a household object.
It's funny how far ahead 3d printers are in terms of consumer experience, everything is open, everything works and the tech is like 300 times more complex.
Bambu is working on it already — can’t print unless you’re connected to the internet and send your files through their server, can’t connect to the printer with other slicers besides their slicer.
They had to walk that back some; there is now a “developer mode” where old standard functionality is still exposed, but they’re clearly working as hard as they can to turn it shitty.
There were a bunch of companies that tried right after the FDM patents expired in 2009. Most of them were completely forgotten or ignored because they were closed source (and more importantly closed material) companies and never got very far off the starting blocks.
Bamboo learned from them and decided to pull the rug out after getting a foothold with finally selling decent prebuilt hardware for less than a fortune (see Ultimaker before buying out MakerBot at least).
This is mainly because consumer 3d printer have been developped by 3d printing enthusiast first and not a company, Prusa which was leader for some time used a lot of open sources project to build their printers. As it's getting mainstream as time goes by more and more companies shows up with closed sources project sadly.
Looks like not really closed-source, but not fully open as the previous printers were.
And the reasoning is the usual, other companies stealing their designs. :/
2D printers used to be like this.
They all worked with open, universal drivers, no additional software, and any ink cartridge that fit inside the bay.
But then companies figured out that people will just buy the cheapest printer on offer, regardless of everything else.
I think that if one wants to change this, it probably involves some kind of regulation that affects how people shop, or at least a shift in social norms, so that some kind of metric of over-time cost is prominently featured next to the up-front price on goods.
We've seen shifts like that before.
There was a point in time where it was normal, in the United States, to haggle over the prices of goods. It really wasn't all that long ago. Today, that virtually doesn't exist at all, except for over a very few big-ticket items, like cars and houses.
The change started when some people...I think Quakers...decided to start selling their goods with a no-haggle policy. NPR Planet Money did an episode on it some time back...lemme see if I can go dig it up.
JIANG: The whole world I've known is in this price-tag world. Everything has a price, one price.
GOLDSTEIN: But when you take the long view of the historical world, this price-tag world is like a bizarre aberration. You know, for almost all of the history of human commerce - for thousands of years - you walk into a store, and you point to something. And you say, how much does that cost? The guy at the store is going to say, how much you got? You know, everything was a negotiation. And there were good reasons the world was this way.
JIANG: Say I have a store and - I don't know - I'm selling eggs. And a guy walks in, and he looks like he has all day to haggle. And he's really been scouting out the best place to buy eggs. So I sell him a dozen eggs for a buck 50.
GOLDSTEIN: So then, a few minutes later, somebody else comes in. This guy's wearing fancy shoes, clearly does not have a lot of time to haggle. So you sell him eggs for twice as much. You sell him eggs for 3 bucks.
JIANG: Each customer pays what they think is a fair price. I make a profit. We all win.
GOLDSTEIN: This was just the way things were, and almost everybody accepted it, everybody except this one religious group, the Quakers. Robert Phillips, the consultant we talked about the Coke thing, he said the Quakers did this really fringy, radical thing.
PHILLIPS: They would have a fixed price. The Quaker would - the merchant would say what the price is, and that price would be the same for everybody.
GOLDSTEIN: That's it. Having one price for each item, that was the Quakers' radical thing. They thought haggling was just fundamentally unfair. They thought charging different people different prices for the same thing was morally wrong.
JIANG: You can imagine walking into a store and pointing to a dozen eggs and getting all fired up to do an egg haggle.
GOLDSTEIN: Let's go. Let's do this.
JIANG: And then your friend, like, kind of elbows you and says, no, no, this is a Quaker store.
GOLDSTEIN: No haggling. No haggling here.
JIANG: What are you doing?
GOLDSTEIN: Yeah, the Quakers were definitely, definitely in a real minority with this no-haggle thing.
JIANG: But as the modern economy got going in the 1800s and businesses starting getting bigger and bigger, haggle worlds got to be a hassle.
GOLDSTEIN: You know, if you are running a store, if you're working at a store, you need to know a lot to haggle. You need to know how much you paid for the stuff, how much your competitors are selling it for. You need to know how much different customers are willing to pay. Robert Phillips says you couldn't just hire some kid on summer vacation to come and sell stuff at your store.
PHILLIPS: Clerks usually had long apprenticeships before they could actually be allowed behind the counter. So they had to spend a couple of years learning the business.
GOLDSTEIN: Years?
PHILLIPS: Yeah, typically. Learning how to haggle before you would let them be left alone.
JIANG: Haggling is a pain for customers, too. Imagine you're at some store and there are five people in front of you in line. And you have to wait for them to all go through that haggling process before you can buy your shirts or whatever.
GOLDSTEIN: So finally around 1870, a few people decided to take a big risk. They decided to break with haggle world. They invented the price tag, this actual piece of paper stuck on each thing that tells you the price - not some starting offer subject to negotiation, but the price. And inventing the price tag was not just about fairness or what was morally right; it was about building really big stores.
PHILLIPS: Two stores here in New York, Macy's. And Macy was a Quaker. And he featured fixed prices. The most famous one was Wanamaker's in Philadelphia.
JIANG: Wanamaker and Macy's, they're building these new things, these department stores. And they're trying to hire all of these clerks, but they don't want to train them for years and have them become master hagglers. So the price tag solves this problem. It makes it easy for them to hire the clerks.
PHILLIPS: All they had to do was be essentially what clerks are today, you know, knowledgeable about the fabric. Oh, madam, this would look wonderful on you. They didn't have to do pricing. They didn't have to haggle. They didn't have to know the cost of items.
JIANG: Wanamaker becomes this kind of evangelist for the price tag. He says, look, the price tag, it means you, the customer, you don't have to arm wrestle with the clerk anymore when you buy things.
PHILLIPS: There's no longer a war between the seller and the buyer, which is what he called the higgling and the haggling. Everyone can come into Wanamaker's and know they will be treated the same.
JIANG: Customers loved it. The price tag spread. It was everywhere.
:::
That wasn't driven by regulation, but by consumer preference. Consumers (usually, outside maybe upscale restaurants) demand to see the up-front cost of something they buy before buying it. So it's possible that if costs keep shifting from the up-front cost that we can readily see at the time of purchase into over-time costs that we cannot as readily see, we might see consumers just refuse to buy items from retailers that don't also show some kind of a reasonable over-time cost also visible.
Or maybe the government could require some level of disclosure of over-time costs to be shown when selling an item, they way they standardized display of credit card interest rates.
Don't worry. Companies like Bambu and others are trying to lock down shift their printer business in the style of 2d printer companies. I hope it at least happens very slowly, but the enshittification is happening...
They're actually behind. 3D printers are a much newer industry. Most industries start out super open, competitive and collaborative. This speeds up development to consumer-grade products. Eventually one or two companies gain sufficient marketshare to start enforcing anti-consumer shitfuckery. Look at the recent drama with Bambu printers and you'll find that's exactly what's happening. It's a tale as old as time.
Framework actually trolled us into thinking they were going to release a printer but instead they went into a market segment where everything was already modular, repairable and upgradable and gave us something that was not, at all. But hey, they gotta capitalize on the AI nonsense too, I guess?
Has anyone figured out how to 3d print a 2d printer yet?
Edit: actually, scratch that entirely. How difficult do you suppose it would be to create an aftermarket non-malicious logic board to drive the hardware in lieu of the malicious OEM board? After all, it's not the cartridges refusing to print.
There is a piece of software which will take a word document and convert it into an embossed 3D print file. So you could always just skip the middleman and 3D print yourself a plaque version of your document instead.
There are some projects out there that do the entire frame. Steppers, hotend, and control boards are out of reach. There's some hypothetical ways you could do it, but it'd be far more expensive than buying off the shelf stuff and probably get worse results. Even the frames tend to take a lot of filament.
It's more of a nice idea than something practical.
OK, fair enough, but a lot of the issues are the same. In fact, 2d printers have much higher precision requirements than 3d printers. 300dpi is hard to achieve, and that's not even particularly impressive by modern standards. Aligning color heads is even harder. I have my doubts about a FOSS project ever being able to do that, unless it's somehow crowdfunded to bring in existing experts.
Idk if the tech for 3d printers is really more complex. All of the parts are readily available, basically nothing needs to be specially made except the hot end (one single metal part)
The consumer experience for 2d printers worse IMO but that's probably because I'm stuck on Windows with its terrible printing system
I've had an Epson Ecotank for the last couple years and I have no complaints. I just refilled my black ink and it was $11 for 9 oz., which should last me years (but I don't print that often).
Companies were never our friends, but it used to be the case that companies sold products. They sold a product and you got to use it and that was the end of it.
Now instead, thanks largely to the Internet, companies barely care about 'product' at all and instead are all trying to get in on that gravy train of monetised data slurping, subscription models, DRM on every consumable, firmware updates that change the terms on you after the fact, and so on. Every electronic thing in your home is now super hostile to you.
TVs, printers, fridges. These products used to be just products, but now they are trojan horses.
This shift in business model also means a drop in customer service. They used to sell you a product and stand behind it because eventually they wanted you to choose them when you needed a new or different product. Now that they have you roped in via a sort of forced dependency, they don't have to pretend to be nice to you even.
Exactly. The way to make money pre-Internet was "generate repeat business" and the way to do that was to create a product and service the customer was happy with.
The way to make money now is to get the customer trapped, then pump them as hard as possible.
Sure did. Repairable ones. I strongly prefer wired headphones and will keep using them as I can, and I ain't buying earbuds.
But I'd rather not let perfect be the enemy of good. I am not giving up a cellphone, so I'd rather have Fairphone trying (ans sometimes fucking it up) than give my money to anyone else in the market.
Them not being perfect in my eyes doesn't qualify as a hostile relationship between their corporation and me.
You actually can’t sell third-party printers legally, because all printers will include an ink fingerprint which can be traced back to that specific printer. So if someone prints a ransom note or counterfeits cash with it, the FBI will be knocking on their door by the end of the day.
There’s literally a certification process to be allowed to sell printers, and one of the biggest criteria for that certification is agreeing to maintain that fingerprint database. One of the other big criteria is that the printer needs to be able to recognize and refuse to print images of
cash, to prevent counterfeiting. If you try to print an image of a dollar bill, the printer’s firmware will refuse to continue the print job. The issue is that this certification process also ensures there’s a de facto near duopoly on printers, which leads to BS like HP making it increasingly difficult to use affordable ink. They can be blatantly anti-consumer, because they’re protected from any competition.
There’s a reason HP hasn’t already been priced out by some cheap Chinese competitor who is able to undercut the competition. And it’s not because of the difficulty in manufacturing or the price of components. It’s because no other companies are allowed to sell printers.
You make it sound like a huge conspiracy but there are laws and regulations around everything you try to sell, especially for electronics.
You also have to do EMF radiation testing, ensure that your printer doesn't produce toxic aerosols or fumes, and probably a bunch of other things to prove that your product is safe. I don't see why the fingerprinting isn't just another thing on the list of things you have to do to be in compliance with the rules. If your company is capable of producing something as complex as a printer, encoding the device' serial number into a bunch of yellow microdots that you add to the printout shouldn't be an issue.
ensure that your printer doesn't produce toxic aerosols or fumes
But they do? I literally got sick after i spent a day in a small room with a big office printer. And each printer makes my skin itchy, if printing in close proximity.
May I have the legal text, of any country, requiring a certification to sell any printers, or have EURion contellation dection implemented, or legally required to implement tracking dots?
We have great examples of things sold as parts or kits to be assembled
Take handguns as an example. If a murder weapon can be assembled from parts with only the frame 3d printed, and avoid similar laws for traceability, surely a printer is an easier task
You actually can’t sell third-party printers legally, because all printers will include an ink fingerprint which can be traced back to that specific printer.
Okay, so after reading this, they're not specifically degrading print quality, they're just making you do the alignment manually. This is probably legal, but still scummy.
Capitalism is the breeding ground of parasitism. The incentive structures needs to change. Good corporate governance and long term sustainability need to trump short term turnover and fiduciary role to always go up.
As it exists, corporate incentive structures promote leadership by psychopaths that will go to the utmost consequence to drive the last cent out of their customers. This is especially true in the US, which by virtue of competition, metastasises to the entire western world.
"I töö yearn för the cöntrölled mönöpöly, thë ensittificätiön, the röt ecönömy!"
"Brother..."
"I'm leäving töö müch möney on thë täblë! We also hävë öür men Ëlön Müsk as thë shädöw prësidënt, Trümp ïs jüst hïs, ör räthër - öür püppët. Hë wïll dïsmänlë äll cönsümër prötëctïons, as thëy're in thë wäy öf öür pröfits."
"Bröthër... Plëäsë rëcönsïdër!"
"Änd whät ärë yöü gönnä dö if not? Go tö thë cönsümer prötection agencies Ëlön Müsk's DÖGË jüst dïsmäntlëd? Üse an öld HP LaserJet until yöü cän get repläcemënt rollers för it? You know öther parts öf it cän brëäk töö."
"Bröther... You became... ËVÏL! You betrayed EVERYTHING you previously stood for!"
"And Ï wïll dö it as mäny tïmes as nëëded. Ëvil? It's jüst büsïnëss. Mäybë yöü shöüld hävë rëcönsïdërëd yöür vötë för Trümp."
"Bröther... Büt thë tränsës hävë cäncëlled Pikamëë för thë wïzärd gämë! The wökenëss häve been deströying the gäme ïndüstry! I nëëded tö vötë för Dönäld Trümp! Why isn't it wörkïng äs ït wäs süppösëd tö!"
"Yöü vötëd ägäïnst yöür cläss interest öut öf püre hatred. I like ït vërÿ müch! Yöü knöw önë rëäsön she wäs älsö cäncelled wäs düë tö lölï? Ï dön't think Pröjëct 2025 wïll ällöw it för sö löng düë tö tötäl pörn ban!"
"PLEÄSE BRÖTHËR, NÖT THE LÖLÏ! PLEÄSE LET ME KEEP THË CÜTË ÄND FÜNNŸ!"
"Yöü vöted against yöür class interest, yöür personal interest... hahahahahaHAAHAHAHAHAAAA! Yöür sö fünny! Ÿöü'rë thë përfëct vötër för më! Ÿöü'rë thë përfëct cönsümër ëvën! Töö dümb tö rëälïzë äll thë pöliticäl wörkings aröünd yöürself. Änd when anything göes wröng, yöü bläme the minörities öf this söciety. Nöw get exited för Bröther AI, a sübscriptiön service which is essentiäl för öperating the printer! Get ready för price hikes! Get ready för shörter lasting printers!"
I rarely use a printer now that my kids are in college. When it dies, I had a choice between laser printer, Brother inkjet, or none. “None” is now my first choice
Yeah, with the Vault 7 releases and recent leaks showing NSA follows homeless people's connections (who tend to hang out at libraries due to a lack of 3rd spaces), I don't doubt there's specific tracking, malware and other unwanted software at libraries. I don't have any sources of this, but it wouldn't surprise me
Maybe I'm overly parandoid because ::gestures at everything::
Honestly, more people should probably do that. If you have a low printing volume, you'll save a lot of money by going to a store to get prints.
Yes, you can argue that you need the convenience of having a printer right there. Just realize you're spending a lot of extra money for that convenience.
Its a convenience thing, I have one in my office. Some months I do 500-2000...in fact that was one month and why I bought it but after that it has been nothing
I actually bought an old used Brother printer for $20, and it came with toner and everything already, so since I do not print a lot, my only recurring fee is paper and it is miniscule. And should I need to replace the toner, it is still widely available.
Well, whatever that update was, I probably installed it (assuming it's the same here in Japan).
Use pen & paper – Do you really need a printer?
I had to laugh at this. At least in my use case, it's printing out forms and documents that various levels of government needs and I am absolutely not talented enough to reproduce them by hand (also, my handwriting is not fantastic).
I actually bought a little tablet PC so that I could carry a working copy of FreeCAD into my workshop rather than print out plans and such. My little Epson printer does very little.
Yeah, that can cover some cases (also, throwing data on a smartphone, which most people have and keep with them most of the time) but I think that for most people, electronic devices still aren't a complete replacement for paper.
Power. Paper just needs some kind of light in the environment.
Shareability. Okay, there are schemes to let one transfer data from phone to phone, but it's hard to compete with how intuitive and universal handing some paper to someone is.
Battery. Just keeping the display on a phone or laptop, even if you aren't far away from power, on to keep the page visible tends to consume power, and many devices can't keep something visible all day. I'll concede that eInk displays can cover some of that.
Disposability. Paper is pretty cheap, and if a piece of paper gets soaked in water or whatever, it's no big loss.
Use of paper in the physical world. I can do things like create stencils on a sheet of paper and cut them out. It's a device that lets a digital computer interact with the outside world beyond purely showing information.
We're a lot closer to the paperless world than we were when I first started hearing the phrase "paperless office", and a lot of documents never leave electronic form, but I still do occasionally want to use paper.
I would say "power" and "battery" are the same thing.
Yeah sharing digital documents between devices is still a complete urethra sanding, isn't it? If it can't go by email you probably shouldn't even try. Having an x86 tablet running desktop GNU/Linux and Syncthing...Syncthing works very well, Linux works well, Linux UIs on touch screen are more unpleasant than dental surgery, and FreeCAD is less touch screen friendly than the average CLI utility. I can just barely use FreeCAD to look at the spreadsheet on that thing, especially when it's got its keyboard snapped off.
It would be maybe more ideal to have an e-ink device that goes with me to the shop, something that will run for a month on a cell phone battery, that can display things like technical drawings made from CAD, a spreadsheet exported from CAD, along with things like tool manuals and similar reference materials, and with some utility apps like a calculator and maybe a little notepad...
Everything I want we have the technology to do right now, but no one does it the way I'd want it done because interoperability be damned.
As for making stencils and templates, it's something I really miss now that I don't have ready access to a laser engraver.
I used to just print at the convenience store closest to us, but that got to be a real pain buying a house, moving across Japan, renewing SoR (visa), applying for PR, starting my business, doing my taxes, etc. Printing was like 10 yen/page for black and white A4 I think.
I had to laugh at this. At least in my use case, it’s printing out forms and documents that various levels of government needs and I am absolutely not talented enough to reproduce them by hand (also, my handwriting is not fantastic).
If we want to get pedantic, it is possible to get a pen plotter. There are fountain pen compatible pen plotters, and the whole fountain pen world has a healthy and mature third-party ink market.
Now, that's not simply a drop-in replacement for a regular printer, starting with the fact that you need to use monoline fonts so that the plotter traces out what a hand would rather than filling it in, and that a plotter just can't produce all the same stuff. The speed is going to be abysmal compared to a conventional printer for virtually any image. And I don't know if there's anyone who has built one with a paper feed system (there are large-format pen plotters that can work with a continuous-feed roll of paper, but I don't know if those can handle fountain pens. I don't know of a fountain pen plotter that can just take a ream of A4 or US Letter pages and then handle those correctly).
But you can, strictly-speaking, have a computer create output that uses ink from the fountain pen world.
It looks like the latest firmware on their website for my old-ass black & white brother laser was released in 2019.
Hopefully that thing lasts another few decades on top of the ~15 years I’ve already had it, because it sounds like it’s the last printer I’m going to buy.
Only if you can keep it working for ten consecutive minutes. I went through three of them under warranty until my warranty expired, then Epson told me to fuck off.
If have a Canon color laser now. If that conks out and everything on the market by then is locked out shit I'll just convert my 3D printer to a plotter, or maybe go back to clay tablets.
We need an open source RepRap printer. Like, I wonder if this thing could be reverse engineered, given they still make the ink cartridge/head units for it.
I'd be more interested in something more iPad sized with an e-ink display that is more generally usable.
The ReMarkable tablets for example have interesting hardware but the software fits such a narrow use case and I don't think you could slap like, Linux on it or something.
Oh, color laser is the way to go, for sure. Refills are expensive, but rare; the biggest problem is if you have to move them, they're a nightmare. And far heavier than inkjet. But, all things being equal, I'd take a color, duplex laser any day.
You're not the first person I've heard who's had trouble with Ecotanks. I've been very fortunate and have not had any issues. I did learn that you need to print at least once a week or the heads tend to clog; the downside of never replacing the heads with the cartridges, I guess. But now I just have a cron job that prints a test page once a week and it's fine.
Both Ecotanks and laser eliminate that "print anxiety", where you're afraid to use the device because each page costs $2 because of the cartridges costs.
To paraphrase Quint: "I'll never replace a cartridge again."
Background from me: Basically, a number of printers are sold using a razor-and-blades model The printer is cheap. The ink is expensive. This is done because for a number of products, humans have a bias towards a low up-front cost, don't weight ongoing costs as much -- happens with phone plans that come with an inexpensive phone but make up the money over time by being locked to a service that cost more, for example. So if a manufacturer can put a printer on a shelf that has a lower up-front cost, uses the razor-and-blades model, they get the sales, not the one next to them that has a high up-front cost but lower costs for consumables. Inkjet printers manufacturers had been increasingly-widely doing this for some years, with printers getting cheaper and ink being sold at increasingly-higher prices. Third-party ink manufacturers picked up on this and started selling ink at a much cheaper price. This dicked up the business model that printer manufacturers have, and printer manufacturers fired back by building authentication chips into their ink cartridges and similar.
For some time, this was pretty much entirely the province of inkjet printers. Getting a laser printer tended to avoid that. Brother is a prominent laser printer manufacturer that made printers that didn't have restrictions being placed on them, so was often recommended as a way to avoid all this.
Rossman: What Rossman's saying is that Brother has started doing this as well now. He gives some examples of firmware updates being pushed out to Internet-connected Brother printers to cause them to stop accepting third-party ink cartridges, as well as some other behavior that he considers anti-consumer. He had previously recommended Brother monotone laser printers as a way to avoid this [I had as well]. He made a wiki page listing all the things that they're doing. He says that he doesn't know of a type of printer to recommend now.
He then spent a while being licked by his cat, who he says likes the taste of his skin cream. A substantial portion of the video is his cat licking him.
He gives some examples of firmware updates being pushed out to Internet-connected Brother printers to cause them to stop accepting third-party ink cartridges
This is not supported by the references in the linked article. They only talk about the printers refusing to do automatic registration with third-party cartridges.
If we reach a point where an AI can summarize a video to that degree and provide background summaries, I'd happily use it. I mean, I'd mark the origin, but nah, this is just me.
Honestly, that's not a terrible idea in general. Like, if you have an Internet-connected device, you have a hook onto your network that someone can exploit down the line, including -- as Rossman points out -- making it function differently than it did at the time of your purchase in ways that you may not like. And even if you trust the manufacturer, that doesn't mean that someone cannot acquire them and then exploit that hook.
Kind of a problem with apps and other software too. Even open-source software, like the xz attack -- the xz package itself was fine, but you had someone, probably a country, intentionally target and try to seize control of an open-source project to exploit the trust that the open-source project had built up. I understand that it's also been a concern with even browser extensions.
The right to push updates to an Internet-connected device, unfortunately, has value. And there are people who will try to figure out ways to take advantage of that.
Funny you mention apps. I turned auto-update off for all of them on my phone because I got tired of functionality being removed. A couple force updates after you get too far behind. Been alright so far, but it's been less than half a year ago we'll see how it goes in the long run. Security is obviously taking a hit by doing this.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it will just be cycles (assuming we all survive long enough). I’m in an industry where the large companies are imploding and smaller companies are starting to shine again, eventually those companies will likely become big as well and implode.
The last bid I reviewed for a new office recommended Brother printers (woot) but the color laser had toner lock-in. I recommended an alternative and the owner agreed.
Too bad these companies won't know about the products they don't sell because of this crap.
Strictly-speaking, in this case, it's not the ability to be network-connected that's at issue, but rather the ability to push updates to firmware.
I don't know what type of computer you have it connected to, but Linux has a system that will automatically update firmware on USB-attached devices if the attached Linux computer is Internet-connected.
$ sudo fwupdtool get-devices
Will show you a list of managed devices.
I'm sure that Windows and MacOS have comparable schemes.
On Linux, I'm sure that you can blacklist a device for updates.
I'd guess that it's possible to get one of those dedicated USB print servers. Those probably don't support updating firmware on an attached printer. I might have some questions as to how much I'd trust a no-name one of those on my network itself, but...
I should qualify that -- I don't know for sure whether and which distros enable updates to run non-interactively. fwupd has the ability to do so and it's billed as doing so on its github page, but that doesn't mean that a distro has to actually take advantage of that. Could be that in a default configuration on a given distro, it only updates stuff next time you invoke it.
The only reason I'd guess that it might not run automatically is that some devices do not deal well with power loss during firmware updates, and I can imagine that a distro -- which has no way of knowing when a user might start flipping power switches -- might want more-conservative settings. Might be something like the last bit of distro installation, but they might not want to run during normal operation.
But yeah, I bet that Louis Rossman didn't think of that either when he was talking about using USB connectivity to prevent firmware updates.
EDIT: I also vaguely remember reading something claiming that smart TVs from some manufacturer that are not connected to the Internet were using nearby smart TVs of the same brand and within WiFI range that can reach the Internet for Internet connectivity. Ordinarily, I'd say that that's not generally an issue for most devices, but printers often do have wireless networking capability, so probably one more at least theoretical vector via which a printer might potentially reach the Internet. I have not read any claims of a printer doing this, though. I also don't know whether-or-not those claims for the smart TVs were legitimate, but they are technically-possible to do, so...shrugs
I have a Brother MFC-9340CDW that I salvaged from work last year; we replaced it because it kept getting a ghost "paper jam" every time you tried to print something. Turns out the cause is an $18 board that's known to fail. Scanner still works fine though, strangely.
I also have a Kyocera FS-3900DN b&w laser printer from 2006...or somewhere around there. It does the thing, and can even be managed with a CUPS server since it has 10/100 networking.
Now to figure out how to disable automatic firmware updates on the Brother 🤔
Are there actually any good printers? I would pay more for the printer itself if you just don't try and scam me afterwards. It feels like a hopeless space.
Even older HP printers are fine (and I know people love to shit on them, but they too used to be perfectly safe and reasonable choices). More or less the safe/unsafe divide coincides with the switch from printers with 2x16 character displays to ones with full colour screens.
I've got a 2012-designed (but mine is 2017-built) HP Colour Laserjet CP5225dn, it has none of the modern lock-in shenanigans.
Just gotta find one that's new enough that consumables are still readily available (fortunately this usually isn't too difficult), and in good physical condition.
I've always promoted commercial inktank printers for people who do a lot of printing, and people always mentioned Brother as a response, but tbh I've never really hopped on the bandwagon to shill for any particular company.
Just a good commercial inktank printer. A regular printer with all the bells and whistles is going to cost you like $100 and $45 for each ink pack you buy, you might as well just spend $450 on a printer, write it off as home office expense, and call it good.
I heard Brother was good, then I spent way too long formatting different USB sticks in different cluster sizes and formats, and never got ours to work with any of them. Don't buy Brother if you want that feature, either.
I have a Brother printer at work that's old enough that I don't have a single thumb drive small enough to work with it. Haven't tried in a while, but iirc it tops out at 8gb and the smallest I have is 32gb.
But it works fine over the network, so I'll just carry on ignoring the firmware update it's been begging me to install for two years.
I used to work for canon as a service tech. They are a wildly scummy company that routinely goes out of their way to fuck over their employees and customers.
I'm glad there's a printer service close to where I live, I can go there and print every page for cents. There's also one on my faculty, more expensive, but still affordable. I only use my HP printer/scanner to scan documents, ink is expensive as hell.
Well, you probably aren't getting a $100 laser printer unless they've got a razor-and-blades model. I definitely paid more than $100 for the mono laser I have. I don't know what printers out there are gonna be fine with third-party ink (or toner), but any that do are going to cost more, because they aren't relying on ink sales to make the printer business viable.
He says that he doesn't know what to recommend any more, now that Brother has started doing this too.
I understand that Epson has some inkjet printers that don't use ink cartridges. You just pour more from a (cheap) bottle into the tank. Like, they can't implement a lockout, and there are other manufacturers that sell ink for them.
There's a list of their home inkjet printers. Notice how the "EcoTank" ones cost more than the non-EcoTank ones.
Like, one way or another, the printer manufacturer is gonna make their money. Either it's not razor-and-blades model, in which case the printer is gonna cost more but the ink is cheaper, or it's razor-and-blades and you get a cheap printer but pay more in ink and the printer manufacturer will do everything they can to lock out anyone else from selling ink for the thing.
EDIT: I'd add that I am not personally a huge fan of inkjet printers unless one really needs what they can do, like printing photo-quality images, because they have so many more issues with ink handling than do lasers. I can have laser printer sit without powering on for five years, then turn it on, and it'll come right up and work fine. Inkjet printers are prone to clogging problems.
How recent does the printer have to be for them to do this?
The two that I have are old and the toner cartridges don't even have a chip in them, so I doubt they could tell if the toner is 3rd party.
Probably because we all bought printers 10 years ago, or at least I did.
Framework printer.
Make it happen.
dude I would pay gold for that
Not saying they couldn't/shouldn't but printers are a nightmare hellscape and it's a miracle, mostly of HP's marketing department, that they're a household object.
Back before everyone had maps on their phone, printing MapQuest maps was fantastic. This was the early 00's though and we all had money to burn still.
sorry maybe I missed a memo, people are still printing things.. like, on paper?
Yup.
I print the occasional random coloring page for my kids. Thats about it.
I personally don’t, on the off chance I do need to print something I do it at work.
It's funny how far ahead 3d printers are in terms of consumer experience, everything is open, everything works and the tech is like 300 times more complex.
2D printer companies should be shamed to death.
Over time as 3D printers go from tinkerer's toy to household staple, I'd expect them to become more locked down and anti-consumer.
Bambu is working on it already — can’t print unless you’re connected to the internet and send your files through their server, can’t connect to the printer with other slicers besides their slicer.
They had to walk that back some; there is now a “developer mode” where old standard functionality is still exposed, but they’re clearly working as hard as they can to turn it shitty.
By my count, it's been tried twice.
Makerbot after the Stratasys buyout.
There were a bunch of companies that tried right after the FDM patents expired in 2009. Most of them were completely forgotten or ignored because they were closed source (and more importantly closed material) companies and never got very far off the starting blocks.
Bamboo learned from them and decided to pull the rug out after getting a foothold with finally selling decent prebuilt hardware for less than a fortune (see Ultimaker before buying out MakerBot at least).
They would have to become sci-fi level capable before they would be considered household staple items.
Makers by Cory Doctorow is a great novel that explores exactly this.
This is mainly because consumer 3d printer have been developped by 3d printing enthusiast first and not a company, Prusa which was leader for some time used a lot of open sources project to build their printers. As it's getting mainstream as time goes by more and more companies shows up with closed sources project sadly.
Isn’t prusa now doing anti consumer / closed source stuff?
Aren't you confusing them with Bambu?
Their slicer is based on Prusa's exactly because Prusa isn't doing closed source.
One of the latest Prusa printer is closed source If I remember correctly Core xy
What is that even supposed to mean?
https://hackaday.com/2024/11/20/with-core-one-prusas-open-source-hardware-dream-quietly-dies/#more-734822
(I'm not English native)
Thanks for the link.
Looks like not really closed-source, but not fully open as the previous printers were.
And the reasoning is the usual, other companies stealing their designs. :/
You are not completely wrong, they have one printer with closed sources.
2D printers used to be like this.
They all worked with open, universal drivers, no additional software, and any ink cartridge that fit inside the bay.
But then companies figured out that people will just buy the cheapest printer on offer, regardless of everything else.
I think that if one wants to change this, it probably involves some kind of regulation that affects how people shop, or at least a shift in social norms, so that some kind of metric of over-time cost is prominently featured next to the up-front price on goods.
We've seen shifts like that before.
There was a point in time where it was normal, in the United States, to haggle over the prices of goods. It really wasn't all that long ago. Today, that virtually doesn't exist at all, except for over a very few big-ticket items, like cars and houses.
The change started when some people...I think Quakers...decided to start selling their goods with a no-haggle policy. NPR Planet Money did an episode on it some time back...lemme see if I can go dig it up.
Yeah, here we are:
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/415287577
:::spoiler Relevant snippet
:::
That wasn't driven by regulation, but by consumer preference. Consumers (usually, outside maybe upscale restaurants) demand to see the up-front cost of something they buy before buying it. So it's possible that if costs keep shifting from the up-front cost that we can readily see at the time of purchase into over-time costs that we cannot as readily see, we might see consumers just refuse to buy items from retailers that don't also show some kind of a reasonable over-time cost also visible.
Or maybe the government could require some level of disclosure of over-time costs to be shown when selling an item, they way they standardized display of credit card interest rates.
Don't worry. Companies like Bambu and others are trying to lock down shift their printer business in the style of 2d printer companies. I hope it at least happens very slowly, but the enshittification is happening...
They're actually behind. 3D printers are a much newer industry. Most industries start out super open, competitive and collaborative. This speeds up development to consumer-grade products. Eventually one or two companies gain sufficient marketshare to start enforcing anti-consumer shitfuckery. Look at the recent drama with Bambu printers and you'll find that's exactly what's happening. It's a tale as old as time.
Framework actually trolled us into thinking they were going to release a printer but instead they went into a market segment where everything was already modular, repairable and upgradable and gave us something that was not, at all. But hey, they gotta capitalize on the AI nonsense too, I guess?
Enshitification is the word of this century
Of this species.
The consumer getting a product is just a byproduct of generating profits.
People that Weasle their way up the corporate ladder have been prefectly groomed to have no shame.
and to be as amoral as possible.
Has anyone figured out how to 3d print a 2d printer yet?
Edit: actually, scratch that entirely. How difficult do you suppose it would be to create an aftermarket non-malicious logic board to drive the hardware in lieu of the malicious OEM board? After all, it's not the cartridges refusing to print.
There is a piece of software which will take a word document and convert it into an embossed 3D print file. So you could always just skip the middleman and 3D print yourself a plaque version of your document instead.
Just print it, roll some ink on it and slap a sheet of paper on top. There you go, printing 2.0 or something.
That sounds like a 15th century printing press with extra steps.
Kind of, but with less wood and a lot more micro plastics. That's how you can tell it's modern.
I used to have wood a lot more often, before microplastics.
If you start sieving your urine you'll never have to buy filament ever again. Really it's a blessing in disguise.
There are some projects out there that do the entire frame. Steppers, hotend, and control boards are out of reach. There's some hypothetical ways you could do it, but it'd be far more expensive than buying off the shelf stuff and probably get worse results. Even the frames tend to take a lot of filament.
It's more of a nice idea than something practical.
OK, fair enough, but a lot of the issues are the same. In fact, 2d printers have much higher precision requirements than 3d printers. 300dpi is hard to achieve, and that's not even particularly impressive by modern standards. Aligning color heads is even harder. I have my doubts about a FOSS project ever being able to do that, unless it's somehow crowdfunded to bring in existing experts.
Now, a FOSS plotter should be doable.
It's not that hard to convert a cheap 3D printer into a pen plotter is you want to do some 2D printing.
Except those who aren't.
Idk if the tech for 3d printers is really more complex. All of the parts are readily available, basically nothing needs to be specially made except the hot end (one single metal part)
The consumer experience for 2d printers worse IMO but that's probably because I'm stuck on Windows with its terrible printing system
Brother sucks now!?
Truly, this is the canary in the coal mine moment.
It's just capitalism. Don't make it more then what it is.
I don't think I'm making it more than it is. Just can't believe the God-damned Russians got to Brother, too.
Me omw to hack and blackmail brother ceo to get him to enshittify all their printers
Nah, that time has long passed. Brother is probably less bad than many of its competitors, but that doesn't make it good.
Are there no good guys left?
Ironic username, but no, there are none righteous
Just buy an ink tank printer, it fixes 90 percent of your printer grief
I've had an Epson Ecotank for the last couple years and I have no complaints. I just refilled my black ink and it was $11 for 9 oz., which should last me years (but I don't print that often).
Ink dries out, probably better to fill it part way and refill more often.
I don’t know this for a fact, but I would assume dried ink could clog up your cartridge or the printer
Good tip, thanks.
...I remember Brother intnetionally making their stuff VERY user servicable.
Wha happen
Line go up
Shit come down
LINE GO UP
I no longer have any corporate relationships that aren't either apprehensive, strained, or downright antagonistic.
It's us versus them now and they've give their last shits. It's feeling like every company is a cable company now.
Always has been like that.
Not one single corporation is your friend or wants to be. All they want is your money. No exceptions.
Companies were never our friends, but it used to be the case that companies sold products. They sold a product and you got to use it and that was the end of it.
Now instead, thanks largely to the Internet, companies barely care about 'product' at all and instead are all trying to get in on that gravy train of monetised data slurping, subscription models, DRM on every consumable, firmware updates that change the terms on you after the fact, and so on. Every electronic thing in your home is now super hostile to you.
TVs, printers, fridges. These products used to be just products, but now they are trojan horses.
This shift in business model also means a drop in customer service. They used to sell you a product and stand behind it because eventually they wanted you to choose them when you needed a new or different product. Now that they have you roped in via a sort of forced dependency, they don't have to pretend to be nice to you even.
Exactly. The way to make money pre-Internet was "generate repeat business" and the way to do that was to create a product and service the customer was happy with.
The way to make money now is to get the customer trapped, then pump them as hard as possible.
The last step is to put us all in prison and mandate we purchase their product (produced in the prison) from them while earning 69 cents an hour.
I have VERY few and I cherish them.
Fairphone feels great to me. I think My coffee stuff is the same (Profitec, Eureka Mignon); no app or wifi or anything, fairly available spare parts.
Didn't fairphone start selling Bluetooth headphones after getting rid of the headphone jack
Sure did. Repairable ones. I strongly prefer wired headphones and will keep using them as I can, and I ain't buying earbuds.
But I'd rather not let perfect be the enemy of good. I am not giving up a cellphone, so I'd rather have Fairphone trying (ans sometimes fucking it up) than give my money to anyone else in the market.
Them not being perfect in my eyes doesn't qualify as a hostile relationship between their corporation and me.
Sad to hear Louis is having family issues
Took me three tries to figure out what was happening, then I was sad.
Do we really need to crowd fund a FOSS printer? Really?
You actually can’t sell third-party printers legally, because all printers will include an ink fingerprint which can be traced back to that specific printer. So if someone prints a ransom note or counterfeits cash with it, the FBI will be knocking on their door by the end of the day.
There’s literally a certification process to be allowed to sell printers, and one of the biggest criteria for that certification is agreeing to maintain that fingerprint database. One of the other big criteria is that the printer needs to be able to recognize and refuse to print images of cash, to prevent counterfeiting. If you try to print an image of a dollar bill, the printer’s firmware will refuse to continue the print job. The issue is that this certification process also ensures there’s a de facto near duopoly on printers, which leads to BS like HP making it increasingly difficult to use affordable ink. They can be blatantly anti-consumer, because they’re protected from any competition.
There’s a reason HP hasn’t already been priced out by some cheap Chinese competitor who is able to undercut the competition. And it’s not because of the difficulty in manufacturing or the price of components. It’s because no other companies are allowed to sell printers.
You make it sound like a huge conspiracy but there are laws and regulations around everything you try to sell, especially for electronics.
You also have to do EMF radiation testing, ensure that your printer doesn't produce toxic aerosols or fumes, and probably a bunch of other things to prove that your product is safe. I don't see why the fingerprinting isn't just another thing on the list of things you have to do to be in compliance with the rules. If your company is capable of producing something as complex as a printer, encoding the device' serial number into a bunch of yellow microdots that you add to the printout shouldn't be an issue.
But they do? I literally got sick after i spent a day in a small room with a big office printer. And each printer makes my skin itchy, if printing in close proximity.
Inside the US, sure. That just means you don't get the cool FOSS printer.
You can still build it yourself.
yeah let's build "ghost printers" wait are we in a cyberpunk dystopia?!
AR15 lower receiver model. You can buy a kit that's 85% of the way to done and only needs basic tools from there.
May I have the legal text, of any country, requiring a certification to sell any printers, or have EURion contellation dection implemented, or legally required to implement tracking dots?
We have great examples of things sold as parts or kits to be assembled
Take handguns as an example. If a murder weapon can be assembled from parts with only the frame 3d printed, and avoid similar laws for traceability, surely a printer is an easier task
All color printers.
Now i had to put on the in-ears, hook up to phone to.... listen to a guy talking. -_-
Short summary: after he got a firmware update, the MFC 3750 of Louis Rossman prints in worse quality with aftermarket ink.
So laser ones are safe (for now)?
Click the wiki link
Okay, so after reading this, they're not specifically degrading print quality, they're just making you do the alignment manually. This is probably legal, but still scummy.
O, damnit. Not the last bastion of hope!
Edit: 100% serious. Like Rossmann, Brother was the go-to brand.
Man I've had a brother printer so long because of their Linux support this is so annoying
Same. I'm good for a while, but it's going to suck if I ever need to replace it.
good news is modern Linux has great support for printers
Capitalism is the breeding ground of parasitism. The incentive structures needs to change. Good corporate governance and long term sustainability need to trump short term turnover and fiduciary role to always go up. As it exists, corporate incentive structures promote leadership by psychopaths that will go to the utmost consequence to drive the last cent out of their customers. This is especially true in the US, which by virtue of competition, metastasises to the entire western world.
Its been doing that for 50+ years. But just like how capitalism expects growth, the trend is exponential.
Oh, this one stings.
"Bröther, please dö nöt becöme anti-cönsümer!"
"I töö yearn för the cöntrölled mönöpöly, thë ensittificätiön, the röt ecönömy!"
"Brother..."
"I'm leäving töö müch möney on thë täblë! We also hävë öür men Ëlön Müsk as thë shädöw prësidënt, Trümp ïs jüst hïs, ör räthër - öür püppët. Hë wïll dïsmänlë äll cönsümër prötëctïons, as thëy're in thë wäy öf öür pröfits."
"Bröthër... Plëäsë rëcönsïdër!"
"Änd whät ärë yöü gönnä dö if not? Go tö thë cönsümer prötection agencies Ëlön Müsk's DÖGË jüst dïsmäntlëd? Üse an öld HP LaserJet until yöü cän get repläcemënt rollers för it? You know öther parts öf it cän brëäk töö."
"Bröther... You became... ËVÏL! You betrayed EVERYTHING you previously stood for!"
"And Ï wïll dö it as mäny tïmes as nëëded. Ëvil? It's jüst büsïnëss. Mäybë yöü shöüld hävë rëcönsïdërëd yöür vötë för Trümp."
"Bröther... Büt thë tränsës hävë cäncëlled Pikamëë för thë wïzärd gämë! The wökenëss häve been deströying the gäme ïndüstry! I nëëded tö vötë för Dönäld Trümp! Why isn't it wörkïng äs ït wäs süppösëd tö!"
"Yöü vötëd ägäïnst yöür cläss interest öut öf püre hatred. I like ït vërÿ müch! Yöü knöw önë rëäsön she wäs älsö cäncelled wäs düë tö lölï? Ï dön't think Pröjëct 2025 wïll ällöw it för sö löng düë tö tötäl pörn ban!"
"PLEÄSE BRÖTHËR, NÖT THE LÖLÏ! PLEÄSE LET ME KEEP THË CÜTË ÄND FÜNNŸ!"
"Yöü vöted against yöür class interest, yöür personal interest... hahahahahaHAAHAHAHAHAAAA! Yöür sö fünny! Ÿöü'rë thë përfëct vötër för më! Ÿöü'rë thë përfëct cönsümër ëvën! Töö dümb tö rëälïzë äll thë pöliticäl wörkings aröünd yöürself. Änd when anything göes wröng, yöü bläme the minörities öf this söciety. Nöw get exited för Bröther AI, a sübscriptiön service which is essentiäl för öperating the printer! Get ready för price hikes! Get ready för shörter lasting printers!"
"You're truly despicable bröther!"
Wake up babe, new copy pasta just dropped.
You are crazy, but good crazy.
I rarely use a printer now that my kids are in college. When it dies, I had a choice between laser printer, Brother inkjet, or none. “None” is now my first choice
That's what we did.
For the few pages we need to print, I can use the machine at the library for $0.10/page.
So issue here is privacy, the library is likely scanning whatever device connected, not just the files and file metadata
Seriously? The library computers are running Windows 8 I highly doubt they have the technical expertise to do anything. Also why would they?
Yeah, with the Vault 7 releases and recent leaks showing NSA follows homeless people's connections (who tend to hang out at libraries due to a lack of 3rd spaces), I don't doubt there's specific tracking, malware and other unwanted software at libraries. I don't have any sources of this, but it wouldn't surprise me
Maybe I'm overly parandoid because ::gestures at everything::
I trust the library a lot more than I trust Staples or a similar for-profit business.
I kind of doubt it. Local libraries have a hard time staying open due to funding.
And they have a hard time caring about your data because they can't do anything with it anyway.
$5 USB fob for printing
We have a laser printer (Brother), and if it dies, I plan to just go to the local library.
This kinda shit makes me glad I don't own a printer.
That gives a whole new twist to "you'll own nothing and be happy"
Fucking hell that sums up my life surprisingly well actually.
Welcome to the future
Future for normies: Renting/subscribing for everything
Future for me: Rejecting everything, I will write in cuneiform on clay tablets before I subscribe for a fucking HP printer.
Future for us: service bundling so you need to pay for shit services you don't need to get the few you do need.
Sounds like another service to reject. Fucking try me, I will cook over a log fire if necessary just out of spite towards their bullshit.
Honestly, more people should probably do that. If you have a low printing volume, you'll save a lot of money by going to a store to get prints.
Yes, you can argue that you need the convenience of having a printer right there. Just realize you're spending a lot of extra money for that convenience.
Its a convenience thing, I have one in my office. Some months I do 500-2000...in fact that was one month and why I bought it but after that it has been nothing
I actually bought an old used Brother printer for $20, and it came with toner and everything already, so since I do not print a lot, my only recurring fee is paper and it is miniscule. And should I need to replace the toner, it is still widely available.
I've decided that just going to a copy shop a few times a year is less hassle.
Well, whatever that update was, I probably installed it (assuming it's the same here in Japan).
I had to laugh at this. At least in my use case, it's printing out forms and documents that various levels of government needs and I am absolutely not talented enough to reproduce them by hand (also, my handwriting is not fantastic).
I also need one. Our library will print documents for 5¢ per page. Once my Brother HL-2040 craps out, I guess I'll be going there.
Ehhh. I rarely print anything, but I really don't want to give up the ability to print things at any time I want and have them promptly available.
I actually bought a little tablet PC so that I could carry a working copy of FreeCAD into my workshop rather than print out plans and such. My little Epson printer does very little.
Yeah, that can cover some cases (also, throwing data on a smartphone, which most people have and keep with them most of the time) but I think that for most people, electronic devices still aren't a complete replacement for paper.
Power. Paper just needs some kind of light in the environment.
Shareability. Okay, there are schemes to let one transfer data from phone to phone, but it's hard to compete with how intuitive and universal handing some paper to someone is.
Battery. Just keeping the display on a phone or laptop, even if you aren't far away from power, on to keep the page visible tends to consume power, and many devices can't keep something visible all day. I'll concede that eInk displays can cover some of that.
Disposability. Paper is pretty cheap, and if a piece of paper gets soaked in water or whatever, it's no big loss.
Use of paper in the physical world. I can do things like create stencils on a sheet of paper and cut them out. It's a device that lets a digital computer interact with the outside world beyond purely showing information.
We're a lot closer to the paperless world than we were when I first started hearing the phrase "paperless office", and a lot of documents never leave electronic form, but I still do occasionally want to use paper.
I would say "power" and "battery" are the same thing.
Yeah sharing digital documents between devices is still a complete urethra sanding, isn't it? If it can't go by email you probably shouldn't even try. Having an x86 tablet running desktop GNU/Linux and Syncthing...Syncthing works very well, Linux works well, Linux UIs on touch screen are more unpleasant than dental surgery, and FreeCAD is less touch screen friendly than the average CLI utility. I can just barely use FreeCAD to look at the spreadsheet on that thing, especially when it's got its keyboard snapped off.
It would be maybe more ideal to have an e-ink device that goes with me to the shop, something that will run for a month on a cell phone battery, that can display things like technical drawings made from CAD, a spreadsheet exported from CAD, along with things like tool manuals and similar reference materials, and with some utility apps like a calculator and maybe a little notepad...
Everything I want we have the technology to do right now, but no one does it the way I'd want it done because interoperability be damned.
As for making stencils and templates, it's something I really miss now that I don't have ready access to a laser engraver.
I used to just print at the convenience store closest to us, but that got to be a real pain buying a house, moving across Japan, renewing SoR (visa), applying for PR, starting my business, doing my taxes, etc. Printing was like 10 yen/page for black and white A4 I think.
If we want to get pedantic, it is possible to get a pen plotter. There are fountain pen compatible pen plotters, and the whole fountain pen world has a healthy and mature third-party ink market.
Now, that's not simply a drop-in replacement for a regular printer, starting with the fact that you need to use monoline fonts so that the plotter traces out what a hand would rather than filling it in, and that a plotter just can't produce all the same stuff. The speed is going to be abysmal compared to a conventional printer for virtually any image. And I don't know if there's anyone who has built one with a paper feed system (there are large-format pen plotters that can work with a continuous-feed roll of paper, but I don't know if those can handle fountain pens. I don't know of a fountain pen plotter that can just take a ream of A4 or US Letter pages and then handle those correctly).
But you can, strictly-speaking, have a computer create output that uses ink from the fountain pen world.
It looks like the latest firmware on their website for my old-ass black & white brother laser was released in 2019.
Hopefully that thing lasts another few decades on top of the ~15 years I’ve already had it, because it sounds like it’s the last printer I’m going to buy.
Epson Ecotanks. Liquid ink in, prints out. There's nothing to lock out.
Only if you can keep it working for ten consecutive minutes. I went through three of them under warranty until my warranty expired, then Epson told me to fuck off.
If have a Canon color laser now. If that conks out and everything on the market by then is locked out shit I'll just convert my 3D printer to a plotter, or maybe go back to clay tablets.
We need an open source RepRap printer. Like, I wonder if this thing could be reverse engineered, given they still make the ink cartridge/head units for it.
What we actually need is to stop fucking printing.
We need a foldable A3 size e-ink reader that you can use like a folder.
I'd be more interested in something more iPad sized with an e-ink display that is more generally usable.
The ReMarkable tablets for example have interesting hardware but the software fits such a narrow use case and I don't think you could slap like, Linux on it or something.
Oh, color laser is the way to go, for sure. Refills are expensive, but rare; the biggest problem is if you have to move them, they're a nightmare. And far heavier than inkjet. But, all things being equal, I'd take a color, duplex laser any day.
You're not the first person I've heard who's had trouble with Ecotanks. I've been very fortunate and have not had any issues. I did learn that you need to print at least once a week or the heads tend to clog; the downside of never replacing the heads with the cartridges, I guess. But now I just have a cron job that prints a test page once a week and it's fine.
Both Ecotanks and laser eliminate that "print anxiety", where you're afraid to use the device because each page costs $2 because of the cartridges costs.
To paraphrase Quint: "I'll never replace a cartridge again."
Canon has a tank printer line too. Absolutely recommend any tank printer (you'll have to check reviews for specifics obviously).
My Canon photo printer can be converted to a tank-style with a drill and a highly illegal cartridge resetter. 😂
PRET - Printer Exploitation Toolkit
Collection of scripts to aid in reverse-engineering of HP OfficeJet printers and others
Summary for those who can't watch at the moment?
Background from me: Basically, a number of printers are sold using a razor-and-blades model The printer is cheap. The ink is expensive. This is done because for a number of products, humans have a bias towards a low up-front cost, don't weight ongoing costs as much -- happens with phone plans that come with an inexpensive phone but make up the money over time by being locked to a service that cost more, for example. So if a manufacturer can put a printer on a shelf that has a lower up-front cost, uses the razor-and-blades model, they get the sales, not the one next to them that has a high up-front cost but lower costs for consumables. Inkjet printers manufacturers had been increasingly-widely doing this for some years, with printers getting cheaper and ink being sold at increasingly-higher prices. Third-party ink manufacturers picked up on this and started selling ink at a much cheaper price. This dicked up the business model that printer manufacturers have, and printer manufacturers fired back by building authentication chips into their ink cartridges and similar.
For some time, this was pretty much entirely the province of inkjet printers. Getting a laser printer tended to avoid that. Brother is a prominent laser printer manufacturer that made printers that didn't have restrictions being placed on them, so was often recommended as a way to avoid all this.
Rossman: What Rossman's saying is that Brother has started doing this as well now. He gives some examples of firmware updates being pushed out to Internet-connected Brother printers to cause them to stop accepting third-party ink cartridges, as well as some other behavior that he considers anti-consumer. He had previously recommended Brother monotone laser printers as a way to avoid this [I had as well]. He made a wiki page listing all the things that they're doing. He says that he doesn't know of a type of printer to recommend now.
He then spent a while being licked by his cat, who he says likes the taste of his skin cream. A substantial portion of the video is his cat licking him.
This is not supported by the references in the linked article. They only talk about the printers refusing to do automatic registration with third-party cartridges.
Am I just jaded about the whole internet or does this read like an AI summary? It feels too specific to be written by a human.
If we reach a point where an AI can summarize a video to that degree and provide background summaries, I'd happily use it. I mean, I'd mark the origin, but nah, this is just me.
Humans are still able to watch a video and understand what is being said in the video
I've been saying that for a couple of years now. They started fucking with third party ink at least a year ago
Have to keep things offline and outdated nowadays 🫤 to prevent things like this happening.
Honestly, that's not a terrible idea in general. Like, if you have an Internet-connected device, you have a hook onto your network that someone can exploit down the line, including -- as Rossman points out -- making it function differently than it did at the time of your purchase in ways that you may not like. And even if you trust the manufacturer, that doesn't mean that someone cannot acquire them and then exploit that hook.
Kind of a problem with apps and other software too. Even open-source software, like the
xzattack -- the xz package itself was fine, but you had someone, probably a country, intentionally target and try to seize control of an open-source project to exploit the trust that the open-source project had built up. I understand that it's also been a concern with even browser extensions.The right to push updates to an Internet-connected device, unfortunately, has value. And there are people who will try to figure out ways to take advantage of that.
Funny you mention apps. I turned auto-update off for all of them on my phone because I got tired of functionality being removed. A couple force updates after you get too far behind. Been alright so far, but it's been less than half a year ago we'll see how it goes in the long run. Security is obviously taking a hit by doing this.
Old printers on ebay are going to be the new game, until we start seeing kickstarter flooded with new printer companies.
I want to agree, but has there ever been a case of the free market saving itself?
Maybe I’m wrong, but I think it will just be cycles (assuming we all survive long enough). I’m in an industry where the large companies are imploding and smaller companies are starting to shine again, eventually those companies will likely become big as well and implode.
enshitification of technological things continues..
The last bid I reviewed for a new office recommended Brother printers (woot) but the color laser had toner lock-in. I recommended an alternative and the owner agreed.
Too bad these companies won't know about the products they don't sell because of this crap.
Welp, I guess that pen plotter I built last year is going to be my full time printer
Glad I've got an Brother laser that has no network connectivity.
Strictly-speaking, in this case, it's not the ability to be network-connected that's at issue, but rather the ability to push updates to firmware.
I don't know what type of computer you have it connected to, but Linux has a system that will automatically update firmware on USB-attached devices if the attached Linux computer is Internet-connected.
Will show you a list of managed devices.
I'm sure that Windows and MacOS have comparable schemes.
On Linux, I'm sure that you can blacklist a device for updates.
I'd guess that it's possible to get one of those dedicated USB print servers. Those probably don't support updating firmware on an attached printer. I might have some questions as to how much I'd trust a no-name one of those on my network itself, but...
Shit. I didn't even think of that. I'm using fedora. Tomorrow I'll be blocking firmware updates for the printer. Thank you for pointing that out.
I should qualify that -- I don't know for sure whether and which distros enable updates to run non-interactively.
fwupdhas the ability to do so and it's billed as doing so on its github page, but that doesn't mean that a distro has to actually take advantage of that. Could be that in a default configuration on a given distro, it only updates stuff next time you invoke it.The only reason I'd guess that it might not run automatically is that some devices do not deal well with power loss during firmware updates, and I can imagine that a distro -- which has no way of knowing when a user might start flipping power switches -- might want more-conservative settings. Might be something like the last bit of distro installation, but they might not want to run during normal operation.
But yeah, I bet that Louis Rossman didn't think of that either when he was talking about using USB connectivity to prevent firmware updates.
EDIT: I also vaguely remember reading something claiming that smart TVs from some manufacturer that are not connected to the Internet were using nearby smart TVs of the same brand and within WiFI range that can reach the Internet for Internet connectivity. Ordinarily, I'd say that that's not generally an issue for most devices, but printers often do have wireless networking capability, so probably one more at least theoretical vector via which a printer might potentially reach the Internet. I have not read any claims of a printer doing this, though. I also don't know whether-or-not those claims for the smart TVs were legitimate, but they are technically-possible to do, so...shrugs
Not sure if I got the update yet, but I'm banning my printer from accessing the internet right now.
I have a Brother MFC-9340CDW that I salvaged from work last year; we replaced it because it kept getting a ghost "paper jam" every time you tried to print something. Turns out the cause is an $18 board that's known to fail. Scanner still works fine though, strangely.
I also have a Kyocera FS-3900DN b&w laser printer from 2006...or somewhere around there. It does the thing, and can even be managed with a CUPS server since it has 10/100 networking.
Now to figure out how to disable automatic firmware updates on the Brother 🤔
Are there actually any good printers? I would pay more for the printer itself if you just don't try and scam me afterwards. It feels like a hopeless space.
You might have to consider buying used.
Even older HP printers are fine (and I know people love to shit on them, but they too used to be perfectly safe and reasonable choices). More or less the safe/unsafe divide coincides with the switch from printers with 2x16 character displays to ones with full colour screens.
I've got a 2012-designed (but mine is 2017-built) HP Colour Laserjet CP5225dn, it has none of the modern lock-in shenanigans.
Just gotta find one that's new enough that consumables are still readily available (fortunately this usually isn't too difficult), and in good physical condition.
I've always promoted commercial inktank printers for people who do a lot of printing, and people always mentioned Brother as a response, but tbh I've never really hopped on the bandwagon to shill for any particular company.
Just a good commercial inktank printer. A regular printer with all the bells and whistles is going to cost you like $100 and $45 for each ink pack you buy, you might as well just spend $450 on a printer, write it off as home office expense, and call it good.
Can't watch right now, but is there a list of affected devices?
I heard Brother was good, then I spent way too long formatting different USB sticks in different cluster sizes and formats, and never got ours to work with any of them. Don't buy Brother if you want that feature, either.
FYI an MBR table with a fat32 partition is probably what it was looking for. If that doesn't work odds are the port is broken
That goes without saying... another user here says the drive can't be larger than 8GB but I'm fairly certain I tried that, too.
Edit: 4GB FAT32 worked. It may have a 4GB limit. On a brand new multifunction business printer/copier/scanner.
I have a Brother printer at work that's old enough that I don't have a single thumb drive small enough to work with it. Haven't tried in a while, but iirc it tops out at 8gb and the smallest I have is 32gb.
But it works fine over the network, so I'll just carry on ignoring the firmware update it's been begging me to install for two years.
Same but I thought Louis had a brother who became evil for some reason 😭
I didn't even know he had a brother.
I have a Canon color laser printer which works pretty well and doesn’t pull any of this shit. They’re probably the last one standing now.
I used to work for canon as a service tech. They are a wildly scummy company that routinely goes out of their way to fuck over their employees and customers.
Hey, I work for canon in tech support right now. Trying to find a better job though haha
Go with a bottle printer, or at least a laser and get a standalone scanner for USB. Cartridges suck, literally, all-in-ones even moreso.
I'm glad there's a printer service close to where I live, I can go there and print every page for cents. There's also one on my faculty, more expensive, but still affordable. I only use my HP printer/scanner to scan documents, ink is expensive as hell.
Ugh.
Well, you probably aren't getting a $100 laser printer unless they've got a razor-and-blades model. I definitely paid more than $100 for the mono laser I have. I don't know what printers out there are gonna be fine with third-party ink (or toner), but any that do are going to cost more, because they aren't relying on ink sales to make the printer business viable.
He says that he doesn't know what to recommend any more, now that Brother has started doing this too.
I understand that Epson has some inkjet printers that don't use ink cartridges. You just pour more from a (cheap) bottle into the tank. Like, they can't implement a lockout, and there are other manufacturers that sell ink for them.
kagis
"Ecotank".
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=ecotank
But if you want those, they're gonna cost more than printers that are using the razor-and-blades model and expecting to make their money on the ink.
https://epson.com/For-Home/Printers/Inkjet/c/h110
There's a list of their home inkjet printers. Notice how the "EcoTank" ones cost more than the non-EcoTank ones.
Like, one way or another, the printer manufacturer is gonna make their money. Either it's not razor-and-blades model, in which case the printer is gonna cost more but the ink is cheaper, or it's razor-and-blades and you get a cheap printer but pay more in ink and the printer manufacturer will do everything they can to lock out anyone else from selling ink for the thing.
EDIT: I'd add that I am not personally a huge fan of inkjet printers unless one really needs what they can do, like printing photo-quality images, because they have so many more issues with ink handling than do lasers. I can have laser printer sit without powering on for five years, then turn it on, and it'll come right up and work fine. Inkjet printers are prone to clogging problems.
I haven’t printed anything in years, but damn, this sucks.
How recent does the printer have to be for them to do this?
The two that I have are old and the toner cartridges don't even have a chip in them, so I doubt they could tell if the toner is 3rd party.