I tried to read the article but my HP computer just turned off randomly and installed an unauthorized bios update bricking it. I'm on my phone now and outraged.
UEFI based computers can be unbricked. BIOS based ones are much hard to recover.
HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
61–70 of 110 posts
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some people requires market to work 100% perfect, or else government regulations. For some reason, government regulations are allowed to fail miserably (e.g. 18th amendment). The market solution doesn't have to be your desired solution. Here it seems that some people doesn't care HP practices, so market provides shitty HP practices. They have easy options (bare minimum: don't buy HP), but they actively avoid them, so…
The incentives of capitalism are such that unless there are very strict regulations, it degenerates in what the game of monopoly tries to convey in a visceral manner. A few people will own everything at the cost of everybody else. Because protection against monopolies is dead in USA, we see exactly this play out.
What monopoly? You just can buy a printer with refillable ink tanks from several competitors, but also from HP. Then you pay the real price for the printer and the printer heads that need to be replaced occasionally.
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
maybe not.. my HP laptop did a BIOS update yesterday via windows shutdown without warning. turned it of because the battery was low. luckily I got the charger on it in time.
Tbf that's a mechanism integrated directly into Windows updates now and has nothing to do with HP. Any "critical" bios and CPU microcode updates can be done through Windows Update(and there isn't any good way to selectively block them).
HP is involved in that. They wrote the software, provided it to Microsoft, and are aware of how Windows Update works. I'm reminded of the times Windows Update has "helpfully" installed drivers for HP printers for me that are essentially bloatware, phoning home, asking me to create an account, and advertising its ink.
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
The security chips are getting more and more sophisticated as people start to crack the early versions. The R&D cost of this is pretty large, and so is the material costs. You are only considering HP firmware update. But even in that there will be a huge cost for implementing, testing and deploying this new functionality.
The cat and mouse game of "cracking" the toner/ink chips has gone on as long as they have existed. It's been over a decade since I worked for Xerox on these kinds of chips, so they may have gotten much more complex and expensive since then, but it was always quite a delicate game internally as to what kinds of technology we would actually deploy as it's a very delicate balance from a legal standpoint. Lexmark has his…
The father of a childhood friend of mine was chief counsel during a previous Lexmark supreme court visit (the Static Controls case, I think?). He liked to paint and his basement was full of self-made art, copies of famous works and his own originals. I got the impression he didn't really believe in the corporate position on ink and toner DRM. That may be part of why he retired young.
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#65I just bought an HP color laser printer this week. This despite knowing HP's shenanigans, but COSTCO has too good a deal and the wife really wanted a good modern printer (we have an HP 4Plus). I admit, it prints beautifully. In the settings, there's a way to shutoff automatic updates, which I set. But I don't trust post-Corina HP at all and I wanted to firewall it from the internet. It turns out my D-Link router is v…
I thought that - generally speaking - you can set a device to static IP (no DHCP) and set no gateway to prevent it to access the internet.
Or has this changed?
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#66It seems like a desperate move to make as much money as possible before the consumer printing industry becomes irrelevant.
I wonder what happens then. Do printers become unaffordable, or will some random Chinese company make a $30 printer? A lot of arts and crafts and decorations become real hard without a printer,and monochrome laser is basically useless for home use cases(Unless you actually like paper for documents)
> or will some random Chinese company make a $30 printer?
Surprised Xiaomi hasn’t disrupted that industry yet.
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the discussion about this yesterday here, someone pointed out that Brother printers have gone the same route. Be careful before you buy.
I believe it's Epson who have the tank printers, you can put whatever ink you'd like I to them by design.
Those are also the printers that track in software if the 'waste ink reservoir' is full (which happends after a certain number of printouts) and brick when they reach the limit requiring you to send the printer to the manufacturer.
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I got an Epson ecotank and it really works nicely with third party inks
I got one of those too, and I got it because I didn’t want to worry about this kind of garbage from HP. It’s also a bonus that I haven’t had to refill the ink in a LONG time. But oh my. The quality of the printing is terrible.
The quality of my ecotank's printing is terrible on normal mode, but when I put it into high quality mode it looks nice.
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Every manufacturer that abuses this mechanism for anything other than actual security updates should be fined in a way that registers on their stock price and if they do it twice they should be fined out of existence. No fines, just allow the customer to send back the devices and get a full refund plus all costs covered by the manufacturer...it could be so easy. Give back the HP and buy a Brother....that would be ca…
This is a problem not solved by the market, for many reasons, but the most important one is that they all try to do this sooner or later. Shareholder value must increase and be found somewhere. Only government regulations can keep capitalism in check, maybe an unpopular opinion on HN but it hurts startups too because the market is not penetrable for competition.
When business can affect polices in there favor. Good luck with that. You can see how well Gov. regulation is working out with John Deers control over farming equipment.
Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
#70Printers suck. They should be awesome. But instead, the print quality hasn't really improved since 1999. The last notable feture: tabloid size ink jets came out a decade ago. Printers still have paper handling issues, and inkjets still waste tons of ink unclogging print heads. All the innovation goes into lock-in and marketing strategies for consumables. The silver lining is that most printers have a Linux drivers these days.
I was a big advocate of Brother printers, but the last one I bought in 2020 has been plagued with paper jams and the cyan ink leeched into the yellow internal tank. So I now have a tabloid format scanner + B&W printer. I almost dread shopping for a printer because I feel like I'm entering into an abusive relationship with a loan shark (really, $75 for ink for the $200 printer?... or cheap toner! yeah! Oh, the developer unit costs more than the printer... Boo.)