RepairTuber Louis Rossmann taken aback by Brother’s quiet turn to the dark side.
  • Noxy@pawb.socialEnglish
    1·
    12 minutes ago

    These motherfuckers are actively making tech as a whole less secure by destroying any trust the public may have had in firmware updates.

    Urgent security fixes are gonna go unpatched on a lot of shit because consumers are seeing more and more firmware or software updates actively making things WORSE.

  • LemmyFeed@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    4·
    1 hour ago

    This shit happened to me recently. Installed firmware update and immediately my 3rd party toner stops working. Try to find old firmware to roll back to and couldn’t locate it anywhere. Found some for other models via Google drive links in Reddit posts, but nothing for my printer.

    I replaced the toner with new 3rd party toner which worked. And now I’ll never install another firmware update on the printer and should probably block it from the internet.

      • NauticalNoodle@lemmy.mlEnglish
        5·
        3 hours ago

        I’ve have had this thought too and the only reason I can think of is that the inkjet printers are sold at such a rediculous loss, that anything that could be sold next to them without the offset price from ink would seem like a bad joke.

        • ripcord@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          1 hour ago

          I think they meant - movement to release custom firmware for existing printers.

  • SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.orgEnglish
    4·
    4 hours ago

    Haha, my crappy ass old HP printer still takes refills. No printer company shall ever see another cent of mine 😈

  • OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.mlEnglish
    18·
    6 hours ago

    This is a total shit move but I have tried many printers and I’m still choosing Brother everytime. Especially on some older generations with copy scan and print. None of the other big brands are worth a shit. They all fail or jam in some form or fashion.

      • OhVenus_Baby@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        9 minutes ago

        Oh I believe it but no doubt. But right now even with this totally shitty move and I mean totally shitty move. Brother atleast their older models still accept 3rd party cartridges. Everyone buy those! Fuck the new stuff.

  • DFX4509B@lemmy.orgEnglish
    10·
    5 hours ago

    It’s going to get to the point where you might be better off going back to dot matrix if tank-based inkjet printers are somehow locked down via chemical DRM too.

    • junkthief@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      18·
      8 hours ago

      Right? I used to recommend friends and family invest in a brother laser printer instead of inkjet, especially if they didn’t need color

  • Limonene@lemmy.worldEnglish
    130·
    10 hours ago

    In case anyone was thinking this applies only to inkjet printers: no, it ONLY seems to apply to laser printers – the thing that Brother used to be known for. Where the article says “ink”, they mean “toner”. There is no ink in a laser printer.

      • shalafi@lemmy.worldEnglish
        151·
        9 hours ago

        I believe that only applies to ink jet. You can hardly make secret dots in B&W.

        • Treczoks@lemmy.worldEnglish
          9·
          8 hours ago

          There is something similar for B&W laser printing. Text is never 100% black, but rastered. You can digitally hide a whole lot of information in microraster on a page of printed text.

          • idiomaddict@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            6 hours ago

            Text is never 100% black, but rastered.

            Does “rastered” mean the image is mapped onto a very fine grid and each square is given a 0-100 value for intensity of ink? I looked it up, and it seemed like the squares are given a binary value, but this is nowhere near my wheelhouse and I’m honestly not sure I understood the Wikipedia page, let alone the references

            • Treczoks@lemmy.worldEnglish
              7·
              5 hours ago

              It is actually quite easy: “Black” print does not mean that 100% of all pixels are actually set. Print pixels are never perfect squares, so even if the printer only prints half of the dots, the print is still dark enough. If not, it could print 70% or 80%, but lets stick to 50% for ease of argument.

              So instead of

              XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXX

              it would print

              X X X X
 X X X X
X X X X

              For you, it would still be a “roughly black” spot (keep in mind these 8x3 pixel are 0.032mm wide and 0.012mm high on good laser printer).

              Would you notice if the pattern was slightly different, like

              X X X X
 X XX  X
X X X X

              Make a bonanza of those small changes nobody can see, and you can hide thosands of bytes of data in those patterns on any printed page.