Malware threat from third-party cartridges nothing compared to threat to HP's bottom line
    • dan1101@lemm.eeEnglish
      961·
      10 months ago

      For now anyway. Enshittification strikes too many products eventually.

      • itsJoelle@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        10 months ago

        Which is making me sad. 3d printing is so open atm, but I wouldn’t be surprised if enshittification will take place in this space in my lifetime.

        • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          5·
          10 months ago

          That’s mostly going to be in the hands of Bambu I think, they only recently just allowed users to flash custom firmware onto the X1.

          If Prusa doesn’t come back with a strong challenger we will be in trouble IMO. They have that amazing corexy that rivals the Bambu in performance (but not price!) but for a lot of people it’s too big anyway sadly

          • evranch@lemmy.caEnglish
            3·
            10 months ago

            There’s a huge world of clone printers, aftermarket mainboards, hotends, extruders etc. that doesn’t look like it’s going away.

            Some manufacturers may go closed but it’s way too easy to build your own printer for it to be a big concern in the FDM world.

            Resin on the other hand already has lots of custom slicers, firmware etc. probably because there’s a lot less mechanics and a lot more screen. But I’m not sure of the future of consumer resin anyways, a lot of people are realizing how toxic that unlabelled Chinese product really is.

            • frezik@midwest.socialEnglish
              1·
              10 months ago

              I had someone a while back arguing that FDM printers were hopelessly toxic and resin printers would be the only ones on the market within a year. Naturally, this was well over a year ago.

              Resin printers have their uses, but man, they are a mess to use.

        • frezik@midwest.socialEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          It sorta did, but pulled back. DaVinci tried selling printers that had chips in the filament spools and used the same razer blade business model as low end inkjets. Anet also sold printers that cut too many corners and they often caught fire.

          Then Creality made the Ender 3. I unironically think it’s a brilliant design. It cuts corners just enough to be cheap, but not so much that it’s useless garbage. They had two issues early on: lack of thermal runaway protection in the firmware, and a bad connector to the power supply. Both were fixable by end users, and both have long been fixed in shipping models.

          At the same time, companies like Prusa refused to join in that race to the bottom. Good for them. If you’re an established player like that and already have a reputation for quality, never get involved in a race to the bottom. That’s how you become what HP is now.

    • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.onlineEnglish
      28·
      10 months ago

      I’m just now having to replace my brother printer (HL-2170W) I bought in 06, because the NIC is toast.

      The printer still works great, but duplex printing sure would be nice.

      • monkeyman512@lemmy.worldEnglish
        221·
        10 months ago

        If it still has working USB you can hook it up to a $10 raspberry pi with wifi to act as a print server. I can understand if that’s a more ambitious tech project than your ready to take on.

        • u/lukmly013 💾 (lemmy.sdf.org)@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          4·
          10 months ago

          There also used to be network printer adapters in the past. For example, the Belkin F8T030 Bluetooth AP. Yes, Bluetooth AP. I’d like something like that just for fun. Perhaps not this one specifically, as it only supports BT-LAP out-of-the-box and requires firmware upgrade for BT-PAN. Good luck finding firmware for a niche product from 2003.

          But anyway, perhaps something like that (the printer part) is still made.

        • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.onlineEnglish
          21·
          10 months ago

          I’m a systems engineer, so it would be a short project for me. My homelab router could run the print server, but the USB port is currently powering my pi hole.

          I feel like there would be some way to rig an esp32 or similar micro controller to do the same thing (pis can be scarce atm

          • frezik@midwest.socialEnglish
            1·
            10 months ago

            Rpi stock issues are well behind us. You can buy them straight up now. Even the 1GB RPi4.

            Esp32 may not have enough RAM to buffer large prints, especially if there’s a lot of graphics. It is possible to give it up to 4MB of external RAM, but that’s still not much.

            Pi Pico can do a 16MB external RAM chip. That’s starting to be adaqute.

            I had an HP 5si for a while with 20MB of internal RAM. It struggled with Postscript printing–could only buffer and print one page at a time. Did fine with HP’s own PDL drivers, though.

            • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.onlineEnglish
              1·
              10 months ago

              I still had some trouble getting the Zero 2Ws, but a lot of sellers still have a limit of 1 per order.

              I’ll probably use my Zero W for the print server once I replace the controller for my snake’s enclosure with a 2.

        • pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.onlineEnglish
          131·
          10 months ago

          I haven’t had any reason to print in color for like 20 years. I’m sure many consumers are the same.

          If I do need to print color, I’ll pay $0.10 at UPS or the library or whatever to print it off.

        • Gerudo@lemm.eeEnglish
          6·
          10 months ago

          Every inkjet printer on this planet has a choice. Cheap ink, accessible printheads, expensive. You have to pick one.

          Certain Hp? Expensive cartridges but new print heads with every cart. Epson ecotank? Cheap ink but non replaceable printheads. High-end printers? Insanely priced printheads and ink.

          The only way out is laser.

        • Treczoks@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          10 months ago

          But have a close look at the model you are buying. We recently noticed that the relatively cheap Epson Ecotank we bought for our daughter is a bit difficult to maintain. You simply have no access to the printheads.

  • DeadNinja@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1071·
    10 months ago

    Excuse me - if I bought your product and paid for it, in what universe am I not investing into you, and instead you are investing into me??

    HP is a steaming pile of shit.

      • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        16·
        10 months ago

        I know we assume they’re following the “razor blade” model but I actually find it hard to believe the printers are sold at a loss given how cheap it is to produce at this point.

        Unless by “loss” we’re saying “less than HP thought it could extract.”

      • SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        10 months ago

        They want to make it a subscription that starts automatically when you buy the printer. No payment or the linked credit card expires, no more printing. Keep on paying for that subscription each month even if you don’t print a single page.

    • RatherBeMTB@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      6·
      10 months ago

      The real question here is where are the Chinese printers?! I mean, it’s a big market, why aren’t they getting into it?

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        Xiaomi makes a couple of expensive standard inkjets, but mostly they make photo printers. That’s the only one I can think of.

      • frezik@midwest.socialEnglish
        1·
        10 months ago

        It’s really hard to break into it. Being accurate enough to print at 300dpi is very difficult, and that’s not particularly impressive. If it’s color, then the problems are multiplied. You have to precisely align four different print heads (minimum), and the ink needs to be mixed just right for accurate colors.

        This is also why you don’t see open source 2d printers like you do for 3d printers. On the surface, adding a third dimension seems like it’d make things more complicated, but 3d printers don’t need the level of accuracy that 2d printers do.

        • RatherBeMTB@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          1·
          10 months ago

          But I would think TVs and microchips are more complicated than printers. And those two have been cracked by the Chinese.

    • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
      491·
      10 months ago

      HP is intentionally getting this twisted in the hopes that we won’t notice. But too bad; we noticed.

      The only possible way for a “virus” to be embedded in an ink cartridge is because there is software (or firmware, I guess) in that cartridge. The only reason there is software in an ink cartridge in the first place is because HP needs it to be there for their own nefarious purposes, to wit attempting to prevent you from using third party cartridges, and also to lock you out of using cartridges that may still be full of ink under their stupid “instant ink” scam.

      Without that, the cartridge would just be a box of ink which is all it actually needs to be. HP could have avoided this entire fiasco by… not putting dumbshit DRM firmware in their cartridges in the first place.

        • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.worldEnglish
          26·
          10 months ago

          People say that, but…

          I had a Canon Pixma ip5000 back in the day that had ink cartridges with no electronics in them. For ink level sensing there was an LED and photodiode built into the carriage that the cartridges went into, in the printer itself. Not in the cartridges. They were transparent plastic, so the machine could just shine through and determine when ink was running low. For its usage gauge, it just calculated it based on print output vs. the volume of a new cartridge, assuming you put a full cartridge into it when you told it so. Yes, this meant you could also fool it by telling it you’d installed a new cartridge when you hadn’t, but it would still figure it out right away if you put a truly empty one in.

          And this worked just fine. No problems at all with that system. I used and abused that printer for years, doing volume printing for work with it (it could do 8.5x11 borderless!) until it just plain wore out. Probably after hundreds of thousands of pages.

          So no, I really don’t think having chips running arbitrary code in a goddamn ink cartridge is actually necessary in any way.

          • bstix@feddit.dkEnglish
            91·
            10 months ago

            Crazy idea here: How about not monitoring the ink at all?

            Why does the printer need to know? It’s not like it’s going to explode from not having fresh ink anyway. Just put the ink in a visible container where the user can look and see if it being empty is the cause of a shitty print.

            I’d buy any printer that doesn’t attempt to monitor the ink.

            • jqubed@lemmy.worldEnglish
              4·
              10 months ago

              Maybe so people know to buy a cartridge so it’s on hand before the one runs out, so you’re not having to run to the office supply store in the middle of an important print job? But that’s more of a convenience thing, not necessary.

              • Buddahriffic@lemmy.worldEnglish
                4·
                10 months ago

                Yeah, just make it work like a car’s fuel tank. It has a gauge to say how much is in it. It has a hole so you can add more. Some cars will guess how far you can drive, give or take, based on how much fuel is in the tank. If the fuel gets very low, a more obvious warning will pop up in case you weren’t watching your gauge. But otherwise it just keeps driving in the meantime and if your car needs high octane and you give it low, it will try to run it anyways and if it fucks up the engine, then that’s on the user.

            • jay9@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              10 months ago

              Actually with some print heads they will be damaged if there is no ink

            • SeaJ@lemm.eeEnglish
              2·
              10 months ago

              If it is visible to the user, that means light is hitting it and helping degrade it. Given how rarely people prove these days, you are more likely to end up with a gunked up cartridge.

    • SeaJ@lemm.eeEnglish
      5·
      10 months ago

      They could avoid the possibility of a virus by not having chips in them. Pretty simple fix.

    • Toribor@corndog.socialEnglish
      9·
      10 months ago

      I’m not really on Reddit much anymore but every time an article would get posted about how Redditors were the least valuable social media users for advertising purposes I was always like “Fuck yeah.”

  • thecrotch@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    64·
    10 months ago

    We have seen that you can embed viruses into cartridges, through the cartridge go to the printer, from the printer go to the network

    Hey dipshits, this is possible because you built firmware into your printer cartridges to prevent 3rd party cartridges in the first place

  • FiskFisk33@startrek.websiteEnglish
    62·
    10 months ago

    “We have seen that you can embed viruses into cartridges, through the cartridge go to the printer, from the printer go to the network, so it can create many more problems for customers.”

    If the cartidges didn’t have drm chips you wouldn’t have anything to load with malware to begin with.

  • menthol@lemm.eeEnglish
    57·
    10 months ago

    Why do these dumb ass CEO’s keep admitting this type of stuff in interviews? Don’t tell us your evil plans. No one is going to hear this and be more eager to buy your products. They’re so proud of coming up with ways to screw customers that they just can’t help themselves. They have to let everyone know. I don’t get it.

    • RatherBeMTB@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      184·
      10 months ago

      Because that interview is for investors. He’s looking out for the shares price, not his customers. We can always buy other products, like Canon or Epson. It’s too bad because HP printers are the best, but not enough to let us be robbed like other brands.

  • helmet91@lemmy.worldEnglish
    46·
    10 months ago

    Buying HP products is bad investment.

    I only had the chance to two of their inkjet printers and one of their office laser printers, plus an elitebook laptop. In short, all of them suck.

    Much better (to me, the best) alternatives, that I can safely say are good investments: Canon for inkjet printers, ThinkPad for laptops. Those are quality products. Unfortunately I don’t have any experience with other office laser printers, so I cannot recommend one.

    • DrMango@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      10 months ago

      ThinkPad is now Lenovo just FYI. They were acquired some years ago and now Lenovo makes and sells the ThinkPad line of hardware

        • lud@lemm.eeEnglish
          5·
          10 months ago

          Yeah, Lenovo has owned ThinkPad for ≈ 6 more years than IBM ever did.

  • Mereo@lemmy.caEnglish
    35·
    10 months ago

    Every time a customer buys a printer, it’s an investment for us. We are investing in that customer, and if that customer doesn’t print enough or doesn’t use our supplies, it’s a bad investment.

    Brother, for the love of anything holy, please do not follow HP’s path.

  • veni_vedi_veni@lemmy.worldEnglish
    341·
    10 months ago

    21st century business innovation seems to be make everything a perpetual subscription model, rather than providing better value with new products. It doesn’t make you brilliant as a CEO, may as well just replace you with AI, right? That’s what all the cool investors care about now, right?

  • SuperSpruce@lemmy.zipEnglish
    331·
    10 months ago

    This just screams that it’s a bad investment to buy HP stock at the moment. No company will insult their potential customers if they aren’t desperate.

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.caEnglish
    353·
    10 months ago

    Later in the interview, he added: “Every time a customer buys a printer, it’s an investment for us. We are investing in that customer, and if that customer doesn’t print enough or doesn’t use our supplies, it’s a bad investment.”

    This makes me want to buy 10 million printers and then just sent them on fire…