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Well if you buy a supertank printer, prices for everything all of a sudden seem a lot more reasonable, but you have to pay $200 more for your printer. Now your

by novok 6y ago

Well if you buy a supertank printer, prices for everything all of a sudden seem a lot more reasonable, but you have to pay $200 more for your printer. Now your printer costs the $300 it seems like it should cost based on all the mechanical parts and technology inside of it. It's because we finance our printer purchases with future interest payments in the form of ink.

userbinator 6y ago
You can also buy a cheap printer and hack it with a CIS. I have an old Epson with that setup, and a program some friendly Russian hackers made to disable the cartridge chip DRM. I also mix my own ink, 50% dilution is perfect for text and makes the already cheap bulk ink even cheaper --- I haven't calculated the exact cost but it's probably even cheaper than dot matrix. (I bet that really irritates the corporate scumbags...)
- kbenson 6y ago
  > a program some friendly Russian hackers made to disable the cartridge chip DRM. Open source, or some binary/blob? I'm increasingly less willing to run binary only code from entities I don't have a way to sue or have some legal recourse against if they do something against my interests.
  - ballenf 6y ago
    Do you really have recourse against HP? I don't think they would have pulled this bait-and-switch if we did.
    - kbenson 6y ago
      Well, in my case it's probably the difference between buying a printer or not, not buying HP or not. My wife has a printer (Epson) for her home business, and I'll have her print me something occasionally, but for a business I'm willing to make some allowances. For personal use, I've been so disgusted with the printer market for decades that removing those companies from all aspects except manufacturing and initial purchase is the only thing that makes that purchase palatable. So, the question becomes, what's the cost of removing those companies and their supply chains/software after purchase? If it's well trusted software that doesn't require constant attention, that's attractive. If it's random people providing binaries in a country that I may or may not have any chance of getting recourse if they harm me (that is, trajan horse or exploit, not accidental hardware bricking/breakage), then I'm left wondering whether it's worth it.
  - userbinator 6y ago
    Not open-source, but I trust them because I learned of it from some long-lost forums (which also had hacked printer firmwares to patch out such things), and others had also not experienced any problems. I trust the community far more than the manufacturers (who are certainly doing things against my interests), it reminds me of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925994 I did sniff the communications it did with the printer, so I could probably write an open-source version if I really wanted to; but I don't think there's all that much value in doing so. ...but someone did think there was, so there's this: https://github.com/lion-simba/reink https://github.com/lion-simba/reink
- novok 6y ago
  Of course the DIY hack has always been there, but there is also a value of your time issue too. Like black ink bottle that lasts for 5000 pages costs like $15. For many here having a new maintenance job of maintaining their DIY hack version that breaks more, is less color accurate and is more fragile to move around is not worth the $100-200 your saving from just buying a supertank upfront.

by novok 6y ago

userbinator 6y ago

You can also buy a cheap printer and hack it with a CIS. I have an old Epson with that setup, and a program some friendly Russian hackers made to disable the cartridge chip DRM. I also mix my own ink, 50% dilution is perfect for text and makes the already cheap bulk ink even cheaper --- I haven't calculated the exact cost but it's probably even cheaper than dot matrix. (I bet that really irritates the corporate scumbags...)

kbenson 6y ago
> a program some friendly Russian hackers made to disable the cartridge chip DRM. Open source, or some binary/blob? I'm increasingly less willing to run binary only code from entities I don't have a way to sue or have some legal recourse against if they do something against my interests.
- ballenf 6y ago
  Do you really have recourse against HP? I don't think they would have pulled this bait-and-switch if we did.
  - kbenson 6y ago
    Well, in my case it's probably the difference between buying a printer or not, not buying HP or not. My wife has a printer (Epson) for her home business, and I'll have her print me something occasionally, but for a business I'm willing to make some allowances. For personal use, I've been so disgusted with the printer market for decades that removing those companies from all aspects except manufacturing and initial purchase is the only thing that makes that purchase palatable. So, the question becomes, what's the cost of removing those companies and their supply chains/software after purchase? If it's well trusted software that doesn't require constant attention, that's attractive. If it's random people providing binaries in a country that I may or may not have any chance of getting recourse if they harm me (that is, trajan horse or exploit, not accidental hardware bricking/breakage), then I'm left wondering whether it's worth it.
- userbinator 6y ago
  Not open-source, but I trust them because I learned of it from some long-lost forums (which also had hacked printer firmwares to patch out such things), and others had also not experienced any problems. I trust the community far more than the manufacturers (who are certainly doing things against my interests), it reminds me of this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925994 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13925994 I did sniff the communications it did with the printer, so I could probably write an open-source version if I really wanted to; but I don't think there's all that much value in doing so. ...but someone did think there was, so there's this: https://github.com/lion-simba/reink https://github.com/lion-simba/reink
novok 6y ago
Of course the DIY hack has always been there, but there is also a value of your time issue too. Like black ink bottle that lasts for 5000 pages costs like $15. For many here having a new maintenance job of maintaining their DIY hack version that breaks more, is less color accurate and is more fragile to move around is not worth the $100-200 your saving from just buying a supertank upfront.