Damn, Brother was the only company left I was happy to blind purchase from by name alone.
Brother’s been anti-consumer for at least 5 years now. Not sure why people are just learning about it now.
Brother blocking 3rd party toner was the primary reason why I went with Canon back in 2020.
…I remember Brother intnetionally making their stuff VERY user servicable.
Wha happen
Line go up
Shit come down
Framework printer.
Make it happen.
dude I would pay gold for that
Not saying they couldn’t/shouldn’t but printers are a nightmare hellscape and it’s a miracle, mostly of HP’s marketing department, that they’re a household object.
Back before everyone had maps on their phone, printing MapQuest maps was fantastic. This was the early 00’s though and we all had money to burn still.
Do we really need to crowd fund a FOSS printer? Really?
You actually can’t sell third-party printers legally, because all printers will include an ink fingerprint which can be traced back to that specific printer. So if someone prints a ransom note, the FBI will be knocking on their door by the end of the day.
There’s literally a certification process to be allowed to sell printers, and one of the biggest criteria for that certification is agreeing to maintain that fingerprint database. The issue is that this certification process also ensures there’s a de facto near monopoly on printers, which leads to BS like HP making it increasingly difficult to use affordable ink. They can be blatantly anti-consumer, because they’re protected from any competition.
There’s a reason HP hasn’t already been priced out by some cheap Chinese competitor who is able to undercut the competition. And it’s not because of the difficulty in manufacturing or the price of components. It’s because no other companies are allowed to sell printers.
You make it sound like a huge conspiracy but there are laws and regulations around everything you try to sell, especially for electronics.
You also have to do EMF radiation testing, ensure that your printer doesn’t produce toxic aerosols or fumes, and probably a bunch of other things to prove that your product is safe. I don’t see why the fingerprinting isn’t just another thing on the list of things you have to do to be in compliance with the rules. If your company is capable of producing something as complex as a printer, encoding the device’ serial number into a bunch of yellow microdots that you add to the printout shouldn’t be an issue.
ensure that your printer doesn’t produce toxic aerosols or fumes
But they do? I literally got sick after i spent a day in a small room with a big office printer. And each printer makes my skin itchy, if printing in close proximity.
Inside the US, sure. That just means you don’t get the cool FOSS printer.
You can still build it yourself.
yeah let’s build “ghost printers” wait are we in a cyberpunk dystopia?!
AR15 lower receiver model. You can buy a kit that’s 85% of the way to done and only needs basic tools from there.
You actually can’t sell third-party printers legally, because all printers will include an ink fingerprint which can be traced back to that specific printer.
All color printers.
May I have the legal text, of any country, requiring a certification to sell any printers, or have EURion contellation dection implemented, or legally required to implement tracking dots?
We have great examples of things sold as parts or kits to be assembled
Take handguns as an example. If a murder weapon can be assembled from parts with only the frame 3d printed, and avoid similar laws for traceability, surely a printer is an easier task
Are there no good guys left?
Ironic username, but no, there are none righteous
Just buy an ink tank printer, it fixes 90 percent of your printer grief
It’s funny how far ahead 3d printers are in terms of consumer experience, everything is open, everything works and the tech is like 300 times more complex.
2D printer companies should be shamed to death.
Over time as 3D printers go from tinkerer’s toy to household staple, I’d expect them to become more locked down and anti-consumer.
Bambu is working on it already — can’t print unless you’re connected to the internet and send your files through their server, can’t connect to the printer with other slicers besides their slicer.
They had to walk that back some; there is now a “developer mode” where old standard functionality is still exposed, but they’re clearly working as hard as they can to turn it shitty.
By my count, it’s been tried twice.
Makerbot after the Stratasys buyout.
There were a bunch of companies that tried right after the FDM patents expired in 2009. Most of them were completely forgotten or ignored because they were closed source (and more importantly closed material) companies and never got very far off the starting blocks.
Bamboo learned from them and decided to pull the rug out after getting a foothold with finally selling decent prebuilt hardware for less than a fortune (see Ultimaker before buying out MakerBot at least).
They would have to become sci-fi level capable before they would be considered household staple items.
Makers by Cory Doctorow is a great novel that explores exactly this.
This is mainly because consumer 3d printer have been developped by 3d printing enthusiast first and not a company, Prusa which was leader for some time used a lot of open sources project to build their printers. As it’s getting mainstream as time goes by more and more companies shows up with closed sources project sadly.
Isn’t prusa now doing anti consumer / closed source stuff?
Aren’t you confusing them with Bambu?
Their slicer is based on Prusa’s exactly because Prusa isn’t doing closed source.
One of the latest Prusa printer is closed source If I remember correctly Core xy
2D printers used to be like this.
They all worked with open, universal drivers, no additional software, and any ink cartridge that fit inside the bay.
But then companies figured out that people will just buy the cheapest printer on offer, regardless of everything else.They’re actually behind. 3D printers are a much newer industry. Most industries start out super open, competitive and collaborative. This speeds up development to consumer-grade products. Eventually one or two companies gain sufficient marketshare to start enforcing anti-consumer shitfuckery. Look at the recent drama with Bambu printers and you’ll find that’s exactly what’s happening. It’s a tale as old as time.
Framework actually trolled us into thinking they were going to release a printer but instead they went into a market segment where everything was already modular, repairable and upgradable and gave us something that was not, at all. But hey, they gotta capitalize on the AI nonsense too, I guess?
Enshitification is the word of this century
Of this species.
The consumer getting a product is just a byproduct of generating profits.
People that Weasle their way up the corporate ladder have been prefectly groomed to have no shame.
and to be as amoral as possible.
Has anyone figured out how to 3d print a 2d printer yet?
There is a piece of software which will take a word document and convert it into an embossed 3D print file. So you could always just skip the middleman and 3D print yourself a plaque version of your document instead.
Just print it, roll some ink on it and slap a sheet of paper on top. There you go, printing 2.0 or something.
That sounds like a 15th century printing press with extra steps.
Kind of, but with less wood and a lot more micro plastics. That’s how you can tell it’s modern.
I used to have wood a lot more often, before microplastics.
If you start sieving your urine you’ll never have to buy filament ever again. Really it’s a blessing in disguise.
Except those who aren’t.
Now i had to put on the in-ears, hook up to phone to… listen to a guy talking. -_-
Short summary: the MFC 3750 of Louis Rossman prints in worse quality with aftermarket ink, after he got a firmware update.
Brother sucks now!?
Truly, this is the canary in the coal mine moment.
It’s just capitalism. Don’t make it more then what it is.
I don’t think I’m making it more than it is. Just can’t believe the God-damned Russians got to Brother, too.
Me omw to hack and blackmail brother ceo to get him to enshittify all their printers
Nah, that time has long passed. Brother is probably less bad than many of its competitors, but that doesn’t make it good.
I no longer have any corporate relationships that aren’t either apprehensive, strained, or downright antagonistic.
It’s us versus them now and they’ve give their last shits. It’s feeling like every company is a cable company now.
Always has been like that.
Not one single corporation is your friend or wants to be. All they want is your money. No exceptions.
Companies were never our friends, but it used to be the case that companies sold products. They sold a product and you got to use it and that was the end of it.
Now instead, thanks largely to the Internet, companies barely care about ‘product’ at all and instead are all trying to get in on that gravy train of monetised data slurping, subscription models, DRM on every consumable, firmware updates that change the terms on you after the fact, and so on. Every electronic thing in your home is now super hostile to you.
TVs, printers, fridges. These products used to be just products, but now they are trojan horses.
This shift in business model also means a drop in customer service. They used to sell you a product and stand behind it because eventually they wanted you to choose them when you needed a new or different product. Now that they have you roped in via a sort of forced dependency, they don’t have to pretend to be nice to you even.
Exactly. The way to make money pre-Internet was “generate repeat business” and the way to do that was to create a product and service the customer was happy with.
The way to make money now is to get the customer trapped, then pump them as hard as possible.
I have VERY few and I cherish them.
Fairphone feels great to me. I think My coffee stuff is the same (Profitec, Eureka Mignon); no app or wifi or anything, fairly available spare parts.
Sad to hear Louis is having family issues
Took me three tries to figure out what was happening, then I was sad.
I rarely use a printer now that my kids are in college. When it dies, I had a choice between laser printer, Brother inkjet, or none. “None” is now my first choice
That’s what we did.
For the few pages we need to print, I can use the machine at the library for $0.10/page.
So issue here is privacy, the library is likely scanning whatever device connected, not just the files and file metadata
I trust the library a lot more than I trust Staples or a similar for-profit business.
Seriously? The library computers are running Windows 8 I highly doubt they have the technical expertise to do anything. Also why would they?
Yeah, with the Vault 7 releases and recent leaks showing NSA follows homeless people’s connections (who tend to hang out at libraries due to a lack of 3rd spaces), I don’t doubt there’s specific tracking, malware and other unwanted software at libraries. I don’t have any sources of this, but it wouldn’t surprise me
Maybe I’m overly parandoid because ::gestures at everything::
Okay, so after reading this, they’re not specifically degrading print quality, they’re just making you do the alignment manually. This is probably legal, but still scummy.
This kinda shit makes me glad I don’t own a printer.
That gives a whole new twist to “you’ll own nothing and be happy”
Fucking hell that sums up my life surprisingly well actually.
Welcome to the future
Future for normies: Renting/subscribing for everything
Future for me: Rejecting everything, I will write in cuneiform on clay tablets before I subscribe for a fucking HP printer.
Honestly, more people should probably do that. If you have a low printing volume, you’ll save a lot of money by going to a store to get prints.
Yes, you can argue that you need the convenience of having a printer right there. Just realize you’re spending a lot of extra money for that convenience.
O, damnit. Not the last bastion of hope!
Edit: 100% serious. Like Rossmann, Brother was the go-to brand.
The last bid I reviewed for a new office recommended Brother printers (woot) but the color laser had toner lock-in. I recommended an alternative and the owner agreed.
Too bad these companies won’t know about the products they don’t sell because of this crap.
