This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Legislation is Way overdue for this nonsense. My home security cameras are all being disabled and unable to record videos as they have for years because the company (fuck you Arlo) has decided they want users to just suddenly start paying subscription fees. If we let them every company will eventually move to this model. Even staunch capitalists need to recognize that this is an issue begging for legislation. Stop this insanity.
Thats absolutely outrageous. Thats a brand I'll never be purchasing.
Legislation is the only way to reign it in, of course they'd scream "but prices would go up!". I'd rather pay a few bucks more up front to not pay 10x as much in ink later. The whole subscription model is awful too. They are turning our whole lives into rentals.
I'm sure if they did legislate it they'd do everything they could to try to work around it.
It needs to be eWaste prevention law. Perfectly functioning hardware should never become a brick due to license/subscription. Period. I don't care if your business model is based on it. Fuck you.
My home camera was exactly what prompt me to learn how to reflash IoT devices, and set up a Home Assistant network that's entierly self-hosted. It's way easier than I though.
Want to drop some links for where to get started? I only sort of understand what you just said but I like the idea of my own network and it being easier than it seems!
I'm in the same boat as you with the Arlo cameras. I've got the Pro (4030) cameras. I read an article that said they kinda walked that decision back. They are going to continue the 7 day free cloud storage, so after the EOL date, which was July 1st, they'll continue to offer security updates for a year, but after that our cameras will still work but not receive updates. I'll definitely be looking for other options, but at least they'll still work. If anyone knows a good kit that lets you host the videos yourself I'd be interested in hearing about it.
Security updates should be mandatory. Something like safety recalls on a vehicle.
That's why I never cry for Adobe when they get pirated.
It's shenanigans like this that make me never want to buy a Canon or HP product. If I need a high end inkjet for printing photographs, it's Epson all day. For anything else, I swear by a good used bulletproof Brother.
If I need a high end inkjet for printing photographs, it's Epson all day.
Don’t worry, Epson has other forms of printer enshittification
Brother was good but I’m disappointed by the last units I had. After 4 years of light home usage (one page here and there), they are not picking up paper in the tray. Same for some relatives which bought similar units. Feels like scheduled obsolescence …
The printer might just need a maintenance kit done to it. Those rollers are meant to wear out over time.
Pretty much guaranteed. The rubber stops working as a function of time just as much as pages printed.
A maint kit is cheap and takes about 5 mins to install.
It is surprising they'd stop working after only occasional use. The rollers on my scanner are good for 30k scans.
You say "occasional use", I read "given time for dust to collect".
It's this. All the printers at my office started screwing up in 2022 after barely any usage from 2020-2022.
Like WagesOf said below, the rollers wear out over time and use. So even if you don't use them they do eventually just wear out.
Or even just cleaning from dust, maybe even spider webs.
If it's just that, then the rubber on the rollers had probably dried out. I had the same issue with a 10 year old HP inkjet. Some mg chemicals "rubber renue" worked great.
Sometimes a good cleaning of the rollers with rubbing alcohol will bring it back.
For anyone in the market for a printer: brother.
Got an epson with an ecotank and quite happy with it.
And go for laserjet.
My last three printers have been Brother and they have been great. They do still have chipped toner cartridges but I haven't had any trouble with 3rd party toner. They also work fantastic on Linux.
I’ve been doing IT for over 25 years. The only printer brand I will buy or recommend for the past 15 years running is Brother.
Brother has pulled this shit on my laser, locking out a non genuine cartridge after an update
Be warned they are all pieces of shit
My recommendation is to not buy cheap and look into small or medium printer class printers (depending on the volume).
Never the consumer version if possible.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Were you hoping Canon might be held accountable for its all-in-one printers that mysteriously can’t scan when they’re low on ink, forcing you to buy more?
I just checked, and a judge already dismissed David Leacraft’s lawsuit in November, without Canon ever being forced to show what happens when you try to scan without a full ink cartridge.
Here’s the good news: HP, an even larger and more shameless manufacturer of printers, is still possibly facing down a class-action suit for the same practice.
Interestingly, neither Canon nor HP spent any time trying to argue their printers do scan when they’re low on ink in the lawsuit responses I’ve read.
But when I went back now to check the same product page, it now reads differently: HP no longer claims this printer can scan “whenever” you want it to.
Now, we wait to see whether the case can clear the bars needed to potentially become a big class-action trial, or whether it similarly settles like Canon, or any number of other outcomes.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
This is ridiculous. When will these companies decide they’ve made enough profits and run their companies in a way people enjoy the product as was probably originally intended. Sorry, wishful thinking there!!
What's ridiculous is the fuckin mugs that buy this shit. The same mugs that are buying software by subscriptions, they're actually 50% of the problem
They think they don't have a choice. I've talked to people who use a printer maybe once a year for 3 pages but have convinced themselves they must have a printer in their home ready to go for the one time they'll maybe need to print something out.
Your local library has a printer you can use. Mine lets me print 10 pages per day for free. I'd rather go to the Library than deal with HP's bullshit, no question!
Anyone with a brain that prints a few pages a year has a Brother laser though. Mine just sits gathering dust then goes......
......
.......
Ready
Ink jet printers really are the embodiment of peak capitalism.
I can't wait until a company like Apple creates their own printers and somehow makes it worse.
we have allowed corporations to grow too large, thats it. they have successfully abstracted away all human responsibility, ethics, common sense in lieu of profit.
i see only one solution; kill the stock market. its a sickness. its not even real, its all fake arbitrary numbers the rich absolutely control by leveraging their own information before the peons.
tax. every. trade. tax stock ownership.
if your business cant grow by being better at itself, then maybe start a new one.. dont start skimping materials to save costs... dont start leverage vertical integration so you can make an entire suite of terrible products..
fuck when is enough enough.
so, the constant reach for 'growth' and 'profit' is what is killing us. no business are left to organically just be.
That's capitalism really. Without public investing there's still private investing and the goal is the same: neverending profit.
I wish there was an open source (2D) printer.
Whenever anyone tells me they're on the market for a printer, I actively try and push them towards a laser. My Brother wireless laser has worked flawlessly for years, is extremely easy to maintain, and was not much more expensive than an inkjet when I bought it. The fact that the toner doesn't really go bad like ink, and is an order of magnitude cheaper, makes all the difference. It lasts for a stupid number of pages too (I think I'm on my 2nd or 3rd toner cart in all the years I've had the printer). And it's faster, the toner doesn't run if the page gets wet, etc etc.
These inkjet companies really prey on less technical consumers not understanding that a) they have another option and b) ink is marked up to be worth more than gold by volume.
The answer is simple, stop buying new printers that do this, keep your old one or buy a used one. Hurt them in their profits.
I think it's time to attempt some regulation. Probably won't happen but I don't see any other real, long term solution to this issue.
Ok this is off topic but... What are y'all printing so much? I print a form once or twice a year and just print at the store across the road or the library for 10ct a page. The printer I had probably cost me 3$ a page because I used it so rarely.
