Printers are the text book examples of why device manufacturing shouldn’t be left to big companies. You have tracking dots, spyware infestation, subscription for ink/toners, reporting of the cartridge as empty when you still have much left in it, refusal to print when unused color cartridges are empty, intentional bricking if 3rd party cartridges or ink is used, and utterly crappy firmware in general.
Inkjets require precision manufacturing. But assembling it or other types from components should be possible - like how desktops, mechanical keyboards, etc can be. We really need to ditch filthy mass market printers because DIY printers will be much better than anything they offer.
I’m pretty sure this measure was requested either by the government or some big three letter agency.
I doubt that, if all printers were manufactured by a government monopoly, you wouldn’t have this shit baked in. It would probably be way worse
I’m not at all asking for a government monopoly on making printers, if that wasn’t clear.
It’s insufferable how people will respond to “We shouldn’t let corporations do this” with “OK SO YOU WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO DO IT?!?!”
It was requested by the secret service as a countermeasure for counterfitting. More frequently it’s been used to “catch other criminals”, at least that’s what they say.
More frequently it’s been used to “catch other criminals”
Germans are used to this already. It’s called “Salamitaktik” (pushed piece a piece).
