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HP outrages printer users with firmware update suddenly bricking third-party ink
- lowlevel 4y agoI 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.
- v3ss0n 4y agoWait really?
- arnon 4y agoI think he's being facetious
- cam_l 4y agomaybe 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.
- gambiting 4y agoTbf 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).
- edgineer 4y agoHP 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.
- anthk 4y agoUEFI based computers can be unbricked. BIOS based ones are much hard to recover.
- loloquwowndueo 4y agoBricked things can’t be unbricked. That’s why it’s called “bricking” - they are permanently as useful as a brick. If it can be unbricked then it wasn’t bricked, just borked.
- frankjr 4y agoIt seems like a desperate move to make as much money as possible before the consumer printing industry becomes irrelevant.
- kramerger 4y ago20-25 years ago ink generated the majority of their profits. They know what they are doing. These days they have fewer enterprise costumers so they need to be more careful on how they introduce it.
- eternityforest 4y agoI 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)
- cromka 4y ago> or will some random Chinese company make a $30 printer? Surprised Xiaomi hasn’t disrupted that industry yet.
- mnd999 4y agoWhy would consumer printing become irrelevant?
- frankjr 4y agoMaybe it's just my own little bubble but everything around me seems to be going digital. I used to print invoices / received printed invoices, communicated with the government with printed forms. These days I receive/send invoices via email, and communicate with the government via their web apps. I haven't printed anything in quite a while. And if I wanted to print a photo to put on a wall, I would probably go to a professional shop anyway to get the best quality.
- 4y ago
- kramerger 4y agoJust imagine how much cheaper their printers and cartridges would be if they didn't waste money on security chips and OTA infrastructure
- Maken 4y agoMaybe the point is to make their cartridges expensive.
- bradfa 4y agoThe “security” chips are very inexpensive. Both the physical chip and also the associated cost to engineer them into the product and to program them on the assembly line. HP need an update capability or everyone would be outraged if they couldn’t patch CVE. It’s basically free for HP to have this capability to block 3rd party ink. But it comes with a responsibility to not be a jerk, which they seem to have failed at.
- kramerger 4y agoThe 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.
- bradfa 4y agoThe 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 historically always taken things too far on the legal side and really ruined the ability for printer companies to "protect" their toner/ink sales from 3rd parties. One recent way Lexmark has taken this too far is: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1189_ebfj.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/15-1189_ebfj.pdf That's not the first time Lexmark has ended up in front of the US Supreme Court for similar shenanigans. I don't believe they've ever had good luck when cases have made it to higher courts.
- jamesy0ung 4y agoI swear I've heard this exact story before
- pndy 4y agoFrom this perhaps? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35063208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35063208
- signa11 4y ago[dupe]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35063208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35063208
- steponlego 4y agoThis is why I stuck to my very old laser printer, in this case an HP 1012.
- sambull-airways 4y agoI have one equally old; Dell Color Laser 3110cn. Every day I print something with it, I am amazed and astonished. It doesn't even go through toner very quickly. I've had the thing something like 8 years. It was used in an office and replaced unnecessarily before I took it. I dont think it will survive the next time I have to move house, the plastic casing is cracking and falling off at this point the thing has been through so much. They DEFINITELY don't make em like they used it. I'll probably stop printing things all together for the rest of my life the day that dell gives up the ghost. Its just not worth it
- lenkite 4y agoMy Dad was affected by this and I am now pissed after performing [Parental Support]. I had told him not to buy HP but he still thinks it is the 80s. Well, thankfully Brother Printers is now in my country and so I can smash that HP with a large hammer and call it a day.
- midoridensha 4y agoOn the discussion about this yesterday here, someone pointed out that Brother printers have gone the same route. Be careful before you buy.
- zamalek 4y agoI believe it's Epson who have the tank printers, you can put whatever ink you'd like I to them by design.
- gambiting 4y agoBrother has them as well. Hell, even HP does, for their business injet printers[0]. https://www.hp.com/gb-en/printers/smart-tank.html https://www.hp.com/gb-en/printers/smart-tank.html
- bzzzt 4y agoThose 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.
- LoveMortuus 4y agoAnyone knows of any notable open source printers? Hardware and software.
- Tepix 4y agoHow many times has HP dones this now? Who the hell is still buying HP printers? We, as dissminators should tell every consumer not to buy their crap. "It's a trap!"
- inferiorhuman 4y agoDRM in printer supplies is hardly new. The first HP printer with DRM that comes to mind is the LaserJet 4100. RFID tags and whatnot, they backed off and went with cheaper solutions with the 4200 series. I think Lexmark pioneered selling the printers themselves as loss leaders. I think perhaps what's getting lost here is that in the consumer space printers are being sold on a razor and blade model. The printers themselves are loss leaders. Your $100 laser printer definitely costs more than the sale price to manufacture. Eons ago Kodak tried to buck the trend with cheap consumables and a printer more or less sold at cost. Kodak bailed after a whole five years. Consumers care more about up front costs than they do about the cost of consumables – as it turns out most people are terrible about long term strategizing.
- bradfa 4y agoKodak had some serious reliability issues with the print heads in those printers. I think that was more the reason that it failed rather than consumers not liking the up front price on its own. No one likes buying what’s supposed to be the premium model just to have massive print head failures render your printer useless.
- inferiorhuman 4y agoMaybe, IDK. Inkjets have never held much appeal for me. That said Lexmark lasted way longer in the consumer space and their inkjet printers were widely regarded as crap.
- gambiting 4y agoPeople who need to print something now and reason with themselves that it's cheaper to buy a basic £29 HP printer because obviously they might need to print something again in the future(at which point the ink has long dried and new replacement is £39 for a cartridge).
- jacquesm 4y agoRemote update strikes again. 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.
- nix23 4y ago>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 called a self regulating Market.
- uniqueuid 4y agoBrother apparently has been going down this path as well. I've read that they intentionally degrade print quality with third-party inks and other things [1,2] [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mfc_firmware_update_nongenuine_toner_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mf... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131
- tommica 4y agoI got an Epson ecotank and it really works nicely with third party inks
- sacul 4y agoI 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.
- wccrawford 4y ago
- zvmaz 4y agoHopefully Framework will make printers[1] [1] https://twitter.com/search?q=printer+from%3AFrameworkPuter https://twitter.com/search?q=printer+from%3AFrameworkPuter
- favadi 4y agoI feel lucky when decided to buy a Brother printer instead of HP. Super easy to setup, press the WPS button once to connect to WI-FI and I can start printing from my Ubuntu laptop without install anything.
- sbaiddn 4y agoI 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 vastly more annoying than my printer. Unclear setting menus, no help or manual, and settings that appear to work will block every computer from the internet when the router is reset. I hate the state of modern consumer electronics.
- adontz 4y agoMikrotiks are cheap and more than required for home. I have one and super happy.
- Brian_K_White 4y agoI believe some printers have been caught getting updated from the host pc via the same channel as any other print job. usb, net, doesn't matter. So you also want to make sure you're using a generic driver and not the current "hp smart" bs drivers they've been pushing for several years. Possibly tough to do on a new enough printer, maybe no generic driver available especially for scanning unless you're using linux. Amazingly they still offered old-style drivers for my M281fdw for my wife's win10 machine, which cleared up a problem where the printer would crash and reboot every time she sent a print job, meanwhile I had no problem from linux. Ripped out all the hp smart drivers and put in the basic ones and it never did it again, over 2 years so far. But I have to assume that they just don't even offer classic style drivers for new models by now.
- anthk 4y agoI hate printers. I find them "non computing", even if once we were using teletypes. Terminals won, and, later, graphical screens. I never knew how to fix one at hardware level. I like to mangle data either on a term or a screen, I don't want to be the printed press guy. PostScript, PDF and DJVU look well enough onscreen since NeXTStep and much better in any modern GNU/BSD machine even with GV and DjView at 1280x720 on a 10" screen.
- 4RealFreedom 4y agoThis may not be a popular opinion but personally, I like the smell and feel of paper. One day I hope we can mimic it in an interactive format. Until then, I will continue to use paper.
- kwhitefoot 4y agoCan someone explain how this can be legal?
- indymike 4y agoPrinters 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.)
- pshirshov 4y agoDunno. I've upgraded my brother mfc from 9020cdw to l8900cdw and both quality and speed are lot higher in the newer model. So the progress over 8 years is clearly visible in this case.
- chongli 4y agoI thought it was Brother laser printers that are the benchmark? Inkjet printers are simply the wrong technology for occasional printing. The clogging problem cannot be solved. It’s like trying to use 12V DC for household mains power. Get a black and white Brother laser. They just work. Leave the inkjet printers to the photographers who print giant glossy colour photos every day.
- gandalfian 4y agoPrinters suck the print quality hasn't really improved since 1999. In 1999 I was using a £150 canon colour inket with 360x360 resolution. Lasted ten years with fake ink at £20 a year. Now I am using a £150 canon megatank with 1200x4800 resolution, scan,copy,wifi and print plus an official bottle of ink costs £10 and lasts 5000 pages. Downside, I doubt the modern build quality will last 10 years but fingers crossed. So adjusted for inflation my printer is much better. But having been been tantalised by £50 allinones for 15 years if you can just get past the expensive cartridge chips I agree it doesn't feel like it...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- freediverx 4y agoWhy does anyone still buy anything from HP?
- kkan 4y agoI 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.
- avidiax 4y agoI expect the answer is that printing is a rat's nest of patent protection, trade secrets, etc. It's not easy to make a laser printer from scratch. And now you want a business model based on charging commodity costs for both the hardware and consumables. Which leaves essentially $0 for development costs, which are substantial.
- egberts1 4y agoIve 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_mfc_firmware_update_nongenuine_toner_now/ https://www.reddit.com/r/printers/comments/s9b2eg/brother_mf...
- bastard_op 4y agoThis seems to happen every few years. Printer vendors try to bleed a turnip, lock out features, threaten subscriptions, then public outrage. They back down and waggle their finger saying "I'll be back!" like a good villain. They have to try to remain relevant somehow in a digital age when people certainly aren't printing more lest they all shrivel up and die.
- newmanah223 4y agoI think the US government should create an Energy Star like program for printers. The average cost per year of ink would be shown and whether aftermarket cartridges are accepted. The average person buys because they see the initial cheap cost. It is a bait and switch that is terrible for the environment. Even worse, HP runs green washing ads on YouTube about printing trees. Years ago, I switched over to Brother laserjets that accept aftermarket cartridges. Never worry about printing costs.
- voakbasda 4y agoIf I find my HP printer upgraded in this way, I literally will build a trebuchet in the back of my truck and hurl the now worthless paperweight through the window of the local HP division, which happens to be their printer R&D department. I will happily face any resulting criminal charges, because I am pretty sure there would be enough sympathy here alone to raise bail and legal fees. If they want to behave like criminals, then they should expect tit-for-tat retaliation.