PurpleTentacle @ PurpleTentacle @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Euuhh does nobody realize Brother has existed for like 20 years and doesn't pull all this HP shit?

You were right until around 2020 when Brother, too, started to roll out firmware updates outright blocking third party toners or even worse, making the printers intentionally print like crap with third party cartridges:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

Now, that even Brother has turned to the dark side, I really don't know what printer to recommend other than older/used Brothers with firmware updates disabled.

Do not update its firmware and disable auto-updates:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

Brother used to be the best choice, until ~2020 when they, too, went over to the dark side and secretly blocked third party toners via firmware auto-updates.

Not sure if any non-shitty printer makers are left, there's only so long that you can recommend "try to find an old Brother printer and disable firmware updates" is an effective choice.

Yes, the hardware (a cheap sponge, essentially) that the counter "protects" is easily replaced for little money - but you still can't just reset the counter.

https://epson.com/support/epson-ink-pads-reset-utility-faqs

For "North American users" Epson now offers a tool to reset the self destruct counter one, single, time.

There are third parties now, that offer a reset of the software destruct counter, for a fee.

The fact that a printer sold as "Eco" has a software self destruct that the user requires an unlock key to reset - an occurrence frequent enough to make it a profitable business for third parties to sell such keys - should tell you all you need to know about these printers.

I couldn't confirm, but there supposedly are more premium models with user serviceable waste ink tanks that don't have a self destruct, but most consumer models very much have this limitation.

They are both terrible. HP for obvious reasons, Epson for its self destruct timers.

Until the software counter decides that the waste ink pad is full and the thing blows a software fuse.

Epson's official solution to a full pad is to throw out your printer and buy a new one - literally a printer with a self destruct timer. Not very "eco".

The Epson printers with the non-serviceable waste ink pads and the software self destruct timer? Not sure how user friendly or "eco" those are.

Great idea, atrocious execution.

Inkjet is pretty much terrible for anyone printing very little (more ink wasted on cleaning cycles than actually printing, high chance that the ink dries up regardless) and very much (stupidly expensive and unreliable).

If you don't need color, get a cheap b/w laser printer. Brother used to be one of the last good ones until they, too, decided to block third party cartridges via firmware updates last year.

If you can get an old, used, Brother laser printer for cheap, go for it - they were borderline indestructible and would print with any cheap toner.

Why? Mozilla isn't a threat to open web like Google has shown that they are and they certainly can use all the support they can get.

On mobile I'm using DDG as primary browser.

Don't get me wrong, DDG's app is a massive step up in privacy, but it's hardly a browser, it's simply a WebView frontend. You're pretty much still using Chrome.

Google's proposed "Web Integrity API" browser-DRM was probably the biggest attack on the open web since its conception. I don't think they have fully given up on that idea and they'll likely sneak it in more gradually and slowly. Manifest v3 is just a small baby step in this direction of taking away user control.

Also, isn't that against EU laws?

Very likely, but the final verdict is still out on that one, as far as I know. There are several other services and sites that offer similar opt-out of tracking and ads for money schemes (albeit not as ludicrously expensive).

I believe that's both against the spirit and any reasonable interpretation of the law, but I don't think it has been fully tested in court.

“Our presidential election is not really democracy [...]"

Well, duh!

Eh, that's more likely due to the lower user-base and general activity than a genuine difference in behavior. At least I hope so, since I have seen some truly atrocious takes on Lemmy that haven't received nearly enough downvotes.

I'm using an Ad-, Tracking- etc blocker in all my devices, so I'm not too worried about using Google or Bing when I do.

But I'm hosting my own instance of SearchXNG and that's often simply the most powerful and flexible search engine.

Same here.

Same on Lemmy, minus the "masses" part, maybe.

Same here. It was my second favorite Reddit client (after Boost, and, for a while, Dash), but I feel he priced himself right out of the market. I'm waiting to see what Boost for Lemmy has to offer and at what cost.

I never really warmed up to Infinity for Reddit, but I'll give it another shot. Connect and LiftOff aren't bad either for being this early in development and Voyager just came out swinging.

A decade of development and optimization vs a couple of weeks/months.

It's 22€ (24.50 USD) here. To the commenter who said that's "one MacDonald,'s meal", every single large McMenu here is under 10€. With the usual coupons, you're looking at the cost of McDonald's for my entire family, not just one meal.

I can still, comfortably, afford blowing that much money on an app. But it doesn't even get me any of the many "Ultra" features (that's 110€). Looking at the Ultra page, ljdawson has already made clear that almost all planned Lemmy quality of life features will be pay-gated.

It's also a huge gamble: we have no idea how financially viable Sync will be in a much smaller and far more hostile to non-FOSS apps, community. Heck, I opted out of tracking (like most EU-members of Lemmy would have) and the app isn't even loading any ads at all, the revenue generated for ljdawson is zero.

Ljdawson has already suspended development of the original Reddit client on at least one occasion even though it was massively successful. Don't think for a second he won't cut his losses and run if he doesn't consider the Lemmy client a financial success. The "lifetime" purchase might buy you another 10 years of maintained and polished usage, it might buy you six months. It's a gamble.

Instead of blowing the cost of a small (McDonald's) or a large (Amusement Park) family outing on my second-favorite former Reddit client, I'm waiting for Boost to come out, with hopefully slightly more sensible pricing.