Malware threat from third-party cartridges nothing compared to threat to HP's bottom line
    • awwwyissss@lemm.eeEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      Yup. Just like toll roads, I’ll go out of my way and spend extra effort to avoid printers on principle.

      • pseudorandom@kbin.social
        1·
        9 months ago

        5 years ago I bought a 10 year old HP Laserjet because I was fed up with every single bubble jet printer’s quality and ink cost. I’m still using the toner that came with it. And I’ve been getting low ink warnings for 3 of those years. Maybe 500 or so pages in that time. I’d never buy a new HP though since they phone home. If you find an old Laserjet I can’t recommend them enough.

      • azimir@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        Which is sad. The HP LJ4 was a fucking tank back in the day. I used to get them for friends and family, put in an Ethernet card, clean it up, and then it’s print for another decade.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    If a company sees me not as a customer, but as a “bad investment”, I think it is time to turn into an even worse investment and in the future buy products from a company that values their customers as human beings.

  • OhFudgeBars@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    we sort of see a 20 percent uplift on the value of that customer because you’re locking that person, committing to a longer-term relationship.

    Do these people never listen to themselves? Who the hell wants to be “locked”?

    • sirdorius@programming.devEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      CEO: “We have observed through careful analysis that by locking our customers inside the restaurant, they will continue to order food from us in order to not starve. Therefore, from now on, all doors shall now be one way only”

      Investors: “What brilliant entrepreneurship!”

  • deegeese@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    “3rd party ink will give you a computer virus”

    What a lying sack of crap that guy is.

    • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
      1·
      9 months ago

      If 3rd party ink can give you a computer virus then the printer isn’t built correctly. There’s no reason that should happen.

    • hedgehog@ttrpg.networkEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      If you’re using an HP printer, such an attack is feasible because of the chips that they use for detecting ink levels, verifying the manufacturer, etc… As a result, any cartridge could potentially infect your printer (since potentially an attacker could modify a first party ink/toner cartridge and replace its chip with one infected with malware). As such, the only fully “safe” approach is to modify your HP printer such that it doesn’t connect to these chips at all.

      I look forward to HP providing firmware that will prevent the printer from communicating with any ink/toner chips (and that will allow printing to continue unabated, relying on the user to notice that ink levels are low and that new ink is required).

      • deegeese@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        You’re saying ink can only give you a virus if HP created vulnerabilities in their printers to enable DRM.

        So they’re warning you about a risk they chose to create in order to rip off their customers.

  • dasgoat@lemmy.worldEnglish
    01·
    9 months ago

    I saw their ad for their printer ink that is apparently chipped to stop People from buying third party ink.

    They presented it as a means to ‘prevent fraud’ and to ‘protect your business’

    From what

    From people not buying your overpriced junk? How does you adding what is basically a drm at this point help the consumer combat ‘fraud’?!