You were the chosen one! 😭
They had two things going for them… Decent linux support and non-shitty DRM ink/toner
I’m curious how this will go down in Australia. Seems like a pretty solid slam dunk refund, oh the product doesn’t work as advertised anymore?
Cool, I’ve had this for 5 years and now I’d also like a full refund under Australian Consumer Law.
Motherfuckers.
(I don’t actually own a printer)
I imagine they have some stupid note or sticker somewhere saying “to avoid damaging your printer only use genuine Brother replacement cartridges”.
Then all they have to say is “we patched a bug where unverified 3rd party ink cartriges could erroneously be used and cause malfunction or damage to the product.”I found this help article where they say “Although not all non-genuine supplies may cause quality issues”.
They said they recommend using theirs, but up until this they didn’t say you couldn’t.
Plus, it’s been universally understood that you have been able to use third-party cartridges. I really think if you’re persistent enough, you’d get a refund in Australia. Because else (in Victoria at least) you could take them to VCAT for like $70, which will cost them wayyy more in lawyer expenses than the price of a refund.
This is not legal advice, but I reckon a refund under Australian Consumer Law is extremely doable if they go down this path (for existing printers).
Yeah interesting find, and i agree plus you can always sic the ACCC onto them if they start being painful
I’m only letting my latest Brother printer connect to my computer through the USB cable. No Internet connection at all.
Careful with that you though. I thought the same thing but someone pointed out in another thread that depending on your system, it may update the firmware over USB when you do system updates.
RPi as a printer server, with the printer connected to its USB port. Use FreeBSD on RPi just to make sure…
My general rule of thumb is that any software update has a 50% chance of making the software worse. So I don’t update anything without a good reason. That includes not just device updates but things like phone apps.
Yeah this is terrible from a security and usability point of view. Just stop using proprietary bs systems. Why do you think so many technical people use Linux and avoid IoT devices like the plague? So we don’t have to deal with companies doing stuff we don’t like without a choice.
Keeping up-to-date with security updates is incredibly important.
I’ve never had an issue with viruses, I’m not a big company nor do I download sketchy files. I feel like if there’s something serious enough to affect me (like the iPhone Unicode character exploit), I’d hear about it.
You’ll never have an issue until you do. Not to mention all the issues you don’t know about.
But not so much for the printers…
Printer botnet goes brr.
Printers always go brr.
Unless they’re HP, then they only go brr if you buy their ink. And apparently Brother now too.
Every CVE I flip a coin.
Makes life more exciting.
Fuck I just got rid of my 2008 BW laser brother and bought a new one that hasn’t arrived. Thanks for the warning, at least I will be able to set my firewall before I even connect it to my network
Et tu, frater?
I think its time we deprecate most forms of printing. Clearly corporations cannot be trusted to operate these kinds of companies.
My brother did what!?!?
Buy an ecotank printer, they’re more expensive initially but that’s because they actually make you pay for the printer
Ecotank’s use liquid ink that you fill in tanks instead of cartridges
There’s no way they can check the ink on ecotank printers
So… when there is some controversy over an article in Lemmy it gets the strike though? How did this evolve?
If you read the article:
We are aware of the recent false claims suggesting that a Brother firmware update may have restricted the use of third-party ink cartridges. Please be assured that Brother firmware updates do not block the use of third-party ink in our machines.
So there’s no reason to leave an inflammatory and likely wrong title unchanged or otherwise without notation. The title is completely readable. I’m all for wrong information being flagged, and a strikethrough is a fine method of doing so.
Totally agree. Just the first time I have seen the notation.
I see editability as generally an improvement, especially since the older versions are still visible with a couple of clicks. Reddit titles are not editable. Tweets used to be uneditable; toots are.
The original rationale for not having editing, at least on Reddit and Twitter, was concerns that someone could get a viral post, and then edit it to spam.
That’s not an impossible thing with Lemmy, though we’re not big enough for it to be worth spamming to, for the most part.
We don’t know if it’s wrong though, we just have a statement from the company claiming it is. Now it’s on the community to prove it.
It’s potentially wrong. I guess we’ll see in the coming weeks as people try to prove it one way or another.
That said, the allegation that old firmware isn’t accessible is easy to verify and very troubling for Brother if true (what are they hiding?).
There is no official report of Brother doing what it’s accused of. Only a couple people having issues with a few cartridges, no analysis of whether the flaw was in the third party cartridge or an actual firmware issue, but we should get out the pitchforks and torches and leave a completely unproven statement up? I completely disagree. There’s too much BS passed off as objective truth as it is.
One or two reports could be chalked up to noise. Rossmann provided much more than that. I’m not saying he’s right, I’m just saying there’s sufficient evidence that I’m not just going to accept “nope, we don’t do that.”
We certainly need more evidence, and hopefully Rossmann’s video reaches enough people to get it, one way or another. He has demonstrated admitting when he is wrong, and he has also demonstrated doing the research.
I doubt this is the last we hear about this, and I sincerely hope Brother is redeemed.
I am in no way suggesting we shouldn’t be wary and not investigate. Crappy 3rd party engineering could be an issue. Placing a declarative title with no qualification as truth (because nobody reads the article) despite the quote from the corporation itself denying it in the article shouldn’t be done. Like I said, too much of that happening these days.
Crappy 3rd party engineering could be an issue.
Sure. However, I’ve seen allegations that swapping chips worked for one person and failed for another. That needs to be investigated.
too much of that happening these days
Agreed. Only claim what you have the receipts for. Clickbait blows.
Yes…the engineering could have been in the chip.
The rest, we’re on the same page.
You can edit the title, so if you want to strike through it, go ahead.
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.
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.
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
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 XXXXXXXXit would print
X X X X X X X X X X X XFor 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 XMake 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.
Wait, I thought that’s something that only color laser do with yellow toner…
Edit: Possibly
If it’s not already under the umbrella of right to repair, do we now need right to refill?
And this is why I’ll never connect my working printer to the internet.
Taking a USB stick to it to print is annoying, but fuck this shit.
They’re all horrible companies
Just connect it to a Server (like a raspi) via USB and share the printer through CUPS
Its a little tedious to set up, but it works
Is there a step by step anywhere to achieve this? I’m adept in tech. But don’t have the training or knowledge to just do it
How many cups does it take to transfer the printer over?
I think you can just use 1 large bucket instead of many small cups. Faster that way.
This is the way.
Why do that when you could just connect it to the LAN and put it on a separate VLAN?
Because the built-in networking stack on printers is garbage and having to install drivers on every client sucks.
I’ve never had issues with networking or drivers with my Brother printer. I don’t have any Apple devices, but on Windows and Linux I just use the drivers that come with the OS.
I’ve not had a Brother printer so, can’t say from experience. My Epson Ecotank needed a driver to work. Setting it up on an RPi 3B with a CUPS server took care of it.
Because it’s a lot simpler and avoids the issue of dealing with printer drivers on all your machines.
I could see the argument that it’s more air gapped this way. Without having physical access to the Pi (or at least SSH access), it’d be hard to get any network connection through USB.
But personally, I just blocked outgoing traffic from the printer.
What’s stopping you from connecting it to the local network but denying internet access? E.g. via a firewall rule or separate VLAN?
effort
As if using an USB stick to print isn’t more effort 😂
Most relatable comment ever.
understandable, have a good day
Anyone know which ip addresses to block to stop the updates?
If you set the wrong gateway in the static IP settings or a reserved DHCP lease, it won’t be able to get out.
But will it be able to be reachable by other printers on the network?
It will be reachable by LAN. The gateway address is the router you use to get to addresses outside the subnet mask you set.
First search result explains it more thoroughly if you’re interested
https://www.networkcomputing.com/ip-subnetting/ip-addresses-subnet-masks-and-default-gatewaysGood to know, and thanks for the link!
Why? Does the printer need to be connected to the internet at all, if not for firmware upgrades? (Note: LAN != internet)
Many people use WiFi to connect to their printers for the sake of convenience
You can have devices on your wifi network without giving them access to the internet. You set your firewall (which, for most people, is the router that comes with the internet subscription) to block all internet traffic to and from those devices while still allowing them to communicate with the other devices on the same local network. Fairly straightforward on most routers with a little bit of time spent looking up the basics.
Exactly what I meant with
LAN != internet
Most routers allow you to set child safety settings for devices to block them from accessing the internet in specific timeframes or completely. You can still access the local network from the affected device or access that device from your local network
