Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 110 posts

Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink

#81

Post by otherme123 »

louwrentius wrote: post #52
otherme123 wrote: post #45

Earlier 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.

Not true, and well known as not true for ages in the economic field. The primary source of monopolies are government regulations (e.g. patents, exclusive licenses, etc). In fact the words "monopoly" and "patent" started meaning "the government will allow this and only this business to do that thing, and will prosecute whoever tries to compete".

HP only have like 25% of the printer market. Realistic alternatives currently are: Brother, Epson, Kyocera, Ricoh and in some markets NEC. Anyone buying a HP today is asking for it.

Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink

#83

Post by xxs »

nix23 wrote: post #42
xxs wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The onus is on the customers to realize that the has been an issue, and they would be eligible for a refund (minus inflation). Then there are shipping costs, likely the customers bought it from a local retainer, that may or may not be in business... The endless emails and phone calls. Overall the customers are not in any position of power without a forced recall.

>The onus is on the customers to realize that the has been an issue, If the customer has no issues there are no issues right? >Then there are shipping costs, likely the customers bought it from a local retainer, that may or may not be in business... Again it's an HP and you send it directly to them, the MANUFACTURER has to cover all costs. Your retailer has not made the update so he should have nothing to do with it.…

>If the customer has no issues there are no issues right

Customers have been conditioned to blame themselves for any device/product shortcomings, and consider themselves rather unworthy. Personally I have witnessed that first hand that end users consider both hardware and software too hard to use and any misgivings would be attributed to their own faults. That extends to all kind of hardware - including hand tools.

Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink

#84

Post by nix23 »

jacquesm wrote: post #50
nix23 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The punishment should be blunt, uniform, and intimidating! This is absolutely a situation for fines! To cover refund is a much bigger "fine" and the money flows directly back to those who suffered, that's not the case with fines, and fines are mostly small change for big-corps. Just extend the rights of Customers and everything could be fine.

Refunds can be stymied, much harder with fines (the party on the other side carries a much larger stick). But fine (pun intended), let's do both. Seriously, this sort of stuff should be discouraged in the strongest possible way.

>But fine (pun intended), let's do both.

Absolutely fine with that, plus a massive fine if the refund is not paid back in a fair amount of time ;)

Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink

#85

Post by kkan »

I wonder why there hasn't been some rather cheap, open-source solution for home printing? Why does every single printer manufacturer needs to be so scummy? HP, Epson, Conan. They're all horrible in terms of user experience. Is it so difficult to make a $100 printer that just prints? instead of bricking itself everytime it is actually needed.

Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink

#86

Post by LocalH »

otherme123 wrote: post #81
louwrentius wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not true, and well known as not true for ages in the economic field. The primary source of monopolies are government regulations (e.g. patents, exclusive licenses, etc). In fact the words "monopoly" and "patent" started meaning "the government will allow this and only this business to do that thing, and will prosecute whoever tries to compete". HP only have like 25% of the printer market. Realistic alternatives curre…

The problem with the "economic field" is largely that it treats theory and practice as fungible.

Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink

#87

Post by louwrentius »

trinsic2 wrote: post #69
louwrentius wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The real problem is that a certain political affiliation has opened the floodgates toward unbridled corporate meddling in politics.

If coroporations can set the rule due to legal bribery (lobbying) that's a larger systemic issue that only underwrites my point.

Fortunately there are other examples that show it can be done better, you may have to look for those examples either outside of the USA or in the past of the USA.

Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink

#88

Post by nix23 »

xxs wrote: post #83
nix23 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The onus is on the customers to realize that the has been an issue, If the customer has no issues there are no issues right? >Then there are shipping costs, likely the customers bought it from a local retainer, that may or may not be in business... Again it's an HP and you send it directly to them, the MANUFACTURER has to cover all costs. Your retailer has not made the update so he should have nothing to do with it.…

>If the customer has no issues there are no issues right Customers have been conditioned to blame themselves for any device/product shortcomings, and consider themselves rather unworthy. Personally I have witnessed that first hand that end users consider both hardware and software too hard to use and any misgivings would be attributed to their own faults. That extends to all kind of hardware - including hand tools.

>Customers have been conditioned to blame themselves for any device/product shortcomings, and consider themselves rather unworthy

That's something no one can solve for them, never.

But at least they should be capable going into a "Printer-Forum" and ask.

One then will say: Get a refund or roll back the update, i have the same printer...they do that (the asking) with, for example car's all the time.

Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink

#89

Post by egberts1 »

Ive replaced entire HP printers with Brothers over the last 20 years.

Now Brothers MFC-3750 has gone evil with DRM-like ink cartridge.

Probably the only time that I cannot wait to buy a foreign knockoff instead; perhaps China can step up ... like now?

https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mf...

Re: HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink

#90

Post by sbaiddn »

jaclaz wrote: post #65
sbaiddn wrote: post #51

I 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?

1. Didn't think of setting no gateway.

2. I don't trust an HP printer to, on occasion, try DHCP or change a setting (or look at an open wifi network but that wouldnt be the routers fault) to get an update.

Post reply on HN