Ars TechnicaHP CEO: Blocking third-party ink from printers fights viruses
"Our long-term objective is to make printing a subscription."
Animal Spirits@arstechnica Time to by stock in Brother. Their sales are about to go up
Marco "Ocramius" Pivetta@arstechnica did HP replace their CEO with a gullible LLM? No? Are they really such liars?
Thomas Traynor@arstechnica Which is why I nuked my one HP printer and went to a company that allows me to buy 3rd party ink.
Anthony@arstechnica Ridiculous, but hardly new behavior from them, I haven't touched a HP printer in like 20 years since they started blocking all printing when 1 ink went out.
Freevolt@arstechnica HP CEO trying his best to expand the already ruined reputation in their printer department to the entire HP.
Bill LambI’ve never used an inkjet, only laser. And Brother at that. But can’t help but follow and shake my head at HP’s nonsense.
Liam @ GamingOnLinux 🐧🎮@arstechnica they can get fucked
Steve Cooper@arstechnica Maybe when the EU regulators are finished with mobiles and locked out features they could take a look at HP and others that lock out 3rd party ink.
azog@arstechnica my long term objective is to never use hp again.
SlippiHUDIt really seems to me, if the ink cartridges didn't need microchips, this problem wouldn't exist.
I find it really hard to believe that it's absolutely essential to the printing process.
Jernej Simončič �@arstechnica I've seen HP sell ink tank printers here – how does that fit in? (not that I'll ever buy or recommend a HP printer to anybody)
stop genocide punch nazis@arstechnica My long term objective is to never give HP any money.
Rassilonian Legate@arstechnica
And my long term objective is to cut out as many unnecessary subscriptions as I can, guess I know where that puts HP...
And my long term objective is to cut out as many unnecessary subscriptions as I can, guess I know where that puts HP...
Daniel Dickison@arstechnica probably a good idea to avoid any hardware made by a company that isn’t capable of implementing fucking INK CARTRIDGES safe from viruses 🤦
Matt@arstechnica
Sounds like Apple. They could make their products more secure or they could benefit "unintentionally" by blocking 3rd parties
Sounds like Apple. They could make their products more secure or they could benefit "unintentionally" by blocking 3rd parties
Thorjak
Best printer 2023: just buy this Brother laser printer everyone has, it’s fine
The best printer to buy is the one that works without you needing to think about it or subscribe to some nonsense ink refill thing. For most people, that’s the Brother HL-L2305W or something like the MFC-L2750DW that adds a scanner.
🪨@arstechnica Hewlett Pricks strike again
Garry Keenor@arstechnica my long-term objective is to never buy another HP product #wontGetFooledAgain
Joe Heafner@arstechnica Tell me again subscriptions aren’t abusive. Much like Microsoft introduced a toy operating system that became a vector for software viruses and the IT and antivirus industries were invented solely to keep this toy afloat, HP has introduced another vector around which they want a new industry built. HP and Microsoft both need to be permanently taken down.
Jay Little@arstechnica My long term objective is to never give HP any of my money. Coincidence? Nope.
Kellic Tiger 
Lisra The Grey Cat (They/Them)@arstechnica of course it is. fuck you, HP.
Patrick Morris Miller@arstechnica HP is the Devil.
Nicole ParsonsHow does one get a virus from refilling an ink cartridge?
Locksmith@Npars01 @arstechnica "We want you to buy one of our printers and then pay forever."
justin de kahruvelYou spill it, you dye.
CassandraVert
Bobby Politte@arstechnica And my short term goal is to stop using HP
Beko Pharm (deprecated)@arstechnica think I heard that before.
Guess execs will need to get "comfortable" not owning their printers for subscriptions to take off.
Shortman@arstechnica let the customer execute 😎
Brad Patrick@arstechnica Hard no.
Ed Maste@arstechnica @gsuberland's comment was about SPD EEPROMs on memory modules, not in printer cartridges as the article suggests -- it's a comparably small amount of memory. The point is that they have the background to comment on the plausibility of such an attack.
Graham Sutherland / Polynomial@emaste @arstechnica yeah out of the comments I made that is a weird one to pick for the article
Voltanis@arstechnica
My long term objective is to never buy HP products.
My long term objective is to never buy HP products.
Derf@arstechnica Could this actually mean the chips in the cartridges might be used to store & auto-run code when inserted?
Mercurius Goldstein@arstechnica
Reminds me of some of Kodak’s best business decisions.
Reminds me of some of Kodak’s best business decisions.
Paul Zawada@arstechnica Why does a print cartridge even need a microcontroller and firmware in the first place?!?! It’s an ink container and maybe a print head. I’ll tell you why it has a microcontroller…it’s to block the secondary market.
Tomas Gallucci
RunningCapybara@arstechnica Subscription ❌
Continuous bleeding ✔️
Continuous bleeding ✔️
Mori@arstechnica Whelp, I guess I’ll continue to not buy #HP products for the rest of my life then!
eyrea 🇨🇦@arstechnica And that's just one of the reasons why my long-term solution has been to get rid of my printer and print at copy places instead.
Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️⚧️@arstechnica 3rd party ink might introduce viruses? Maybe, but it would be your (HP) fault if it isn't blocked by your printer. Now f--k off.
Donald F Robertson@arstechnica This is why I bought a bottled ink printer. The printer cost more than an HP printer, and the output is not quite as good, but it is good enough and the ink is all but free.
myname@arstechnica Not sure about the general situation, but at least for me personally, need for printing is going down for ages, and I think they might be doing this, because they know people wouldn't but enough ink without a subscription to be viable in the long term.
europlus 
ThatKomputerKat 
@europlus @arstechnica yeah, hp are fuckers. Easily the worst experiences I had doing temp work were all HP contracts.
No one should buy HP products. No one should contract their IT services. They should be starved of all funds and driven into bankruptcy. They are a blight.
@thatKomputerKat @arstechnica Amen, Brother!
Random_Seed 
💾 🇿🇦@arstechnica something has to give. The subscription based economic model across all product types is not sustainable. Next there will be subscriptions for different grades of clean air. The plus package includes an air quality guarantee. Standard package includes best effort air with 1-5% chance of cancer. It wreaks of a dystopian nightmare where you have to be rich just to breathe clean air. No 3rd party air storage containers allowed. There’s ownership and there’s being owned.