Foss printer when?
Unironically, this is why RMS was radicalized.
RMS: gestures at GCC and the whole GNU/Linux ecosystem Look man, all I wanted to do was to print this letter to my ma…
Closest I’ve seen was rooting a printer via a security exploit
i came across this explanation of it, haven’t verified it directly but he seems to make good content:
https://youtube.com/shorts/ZX8OaZZDlM8
he says theres identification each time you print using the yellow ink, and basically is a counterfeit currency countermeasure
id kill to have a foss print setup though
It’s a feature that can be turned on the confidential documents but I don’t think it’s actually on by default.
You can check for it anyway, just print a document then attempt to scan it, if it’s got the track marks it will refuse to scan because one of the things the track marks do is block scanning, although you can still take a photo of it because the camera probably won’t be able to see the track marks so it’s not 100% secure. In fact it’s largely considered an obsolete security method these days, along with pink flimsies.
good to know, thanks!
I know about the yellow dot thingy. Literally metadata on paper for no reason imo. I highly doubt a person could make a realistic fake through the use of a conventional printer.
In the UK, we don’t even have paper money anymore, it’s plastic… Maybe it’s more of a USA skill issue, too?
In the UK, we don’t even have paper money anymore, it’s plastic… Maybe it’s more of a USA skill issue, too?
US “paper” money has been made of cotton-linen blend cloth for over 100 years.
We seriously need a FOSS+FOSH printer
I have even thought of some names:
- Gutenberg
- Aldus
- Manutius
It’s really surprising this doesn’t already exist. It’s such a hated piece of tech, I would have thought someome would have thought they could do better! I don’t know enough to do it myself but I’d sure as hell support a project to do it!
It’s not, though. Printers are actually fairly expensive to manufacture, and they’re sold heavily subsidized by the companies in order to sell you a decade of printer cartridges where you make up for that loss. It was the first tech subscription model.
If someone made and sold a shitty inkjet printer at cost, the last time I saw something written up on this years ago, it was several times more than the current cost of printers. And consumers are stupid, so they will go for the immediate cheap thing and get locked in to buying proprietary cartridges rather than invest in saving money long term.
What we need is a Graphine OS for existing printers. A repo of firmware updates that anyone can install to jailbreak a handfull of widely sold printers to allow printing every drop of ink, and DIY refills. Let’s be real, we’re not a huge part of their market, so IMO the gains are to exist like wolves preying on the occasional sheep, rather than be wolves that try to evolve thumbs and force everyone to learn how to cook and go shopping in order to eat.
I really hope Brother is telling the truth!
It looks like to me as some redditor got bad quality third party ink and blamed it on firmware. Some karma whores picked it up, as dogging on printer companies is sure way to gain some free updoots.
And now Louis Rossmann picked it up and the lie spread further.
We live in a post-truth society.
Oh FFS. Not Brother as well. I used to recommend them to everyone. Who is left with unshittified printers?
Epson inkjets with refillable tanks probably.
Depending on the frequency of your printing, they can suck as well. Chronically clogged nozzles are maddening.
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.
Could this be anything related to government printer tracking requirements?
I believe that only applies to ink jet. You can hardly make secret dots in B&W.
You were the chosen one! 😭
They had two things going for them… Decent linux support and non-shitty DRM ink/toner
Brother used to be the good guys… Damn.
It’s like every company that wasn’t complete shit just suddenly decided to…go to complete shit.
I suggest whoever has old firmware files to upload them to the Internet Archive (if they allow those).
