It’s so they can print the tracking dots.
i wonder: so what do the laser printers use instead?
I can’t find the article I read, but if I recall correctly, they use patterns of minute variations in the power of the laser to cause a machine-detectable pattern to appear in the final printed output.
They also use microscopic yellow dot patterns. Black and white only prints use a microscopic grey print pattern at the print boundary. The technique is a form of steganography. They aren’t tracking you btw. It gets used primarily to investigate fraud. Printer companies do it primarily because if they don’t, their brand will become associated with print related crimes. There are lists of printers that do not do steganographic serialization but those machines are almost entirely too poor quality to produce any convincing counterfeits anyways.
That’s how it always starts though.
People use any device or service they want. It’s a mix of crooks, tinkerers, journalists, etc.
A company or government makes some moral panic and pushes some privacy or civil rights erosion in the name of “security”. The actual security benefit may or may not exist.
Then other companies do the same to keep up.
Then there’s only a handful of companies not doing the thing, so anyone who doesn’t want their privacy or civil rights eroded uses that, including crooks.
Then politicians and the other companies point to the holdouts as “PROOF!” their changes were good, because look how many crooks use that stuff! (The number of crooks hasn’t changed, they’ve just been concentrated to a single location.) The moral panic deepens.
The non-criminal population that cares about their privacy or civil rights speak out, but get accused of secretly being criminals, or some other crap that can be used to dismiss their concerns. “If you have nothing to hide, why are you so upset?” and all that.
Now laws get passed to force all companies to do the same thing, to stop the criminals! But let’s not worry about anyone else. The tinkerers, journalists, privacy-advocates, etc. They don’t matter.
The law gets passed, and now all toasters are legally required to record your breakfast conversations, for a silly example.
My wife found a black and white Brother laser MFP at Goodwill for $15 and it has been an absolute game changer for us.
Welcome to the Brotherhood.
yeah I lived at a shared house and somone abandoned an HP 1020 laser printer. a sheet in 2.5 seconds and the toner cartridge lasts for a fuckin year, and I print flyers for events
After losing my third or fourth shitty inkjet since college in a recent move, I needed to print something and found myself once again browsing the Staples flyer.
Eventually decided to spend a bit more up front and just got a Brother color laser.
Now it sits there quietly in the corner for months at a time, doing nothing, until I need it, at which point it is always ready, fast, and has great print quality.
Picked up a refurbished laser printer at a garage sale 8 years ago. I still haven’t had to change the ink cartridges
I hope not, given that thing doesn’t have one!
My does. Samsung CLP 315W has like 4 toner cartridges
That was the joke, toner isn’t ink, it’s toner ;-)
I was unaware there was a difference
Ooh, you’re one of today’s lucky 10,000!
Ink is a liquid that is sprayed in tiny dots and dries onto the paper, while toner is a powder that gets attached to the paper with electrostatic forces using lasers, and then fused to it with heat! It’s a super neat process.
And, generally speaking, ink is the stuff with a ridiculously draining business model which costs consumers far more than is justified for cartridges which quickly dry out over time even when not in use, while toner is relatively inexpensive stuff which basically lasts forever and keeps just as fresh and usable as the day you bought it.
Bought one full price, and have no regrets. It’s already paid itself off considering the amount I’ve saved on ink cartridges.
I found a small Dell B1160W at Goodwill for $5 new in box! Best little printer I’ve ever had and I’m still on the original toner cartridge. My only gripe is that it’s wireless or USB. Would love to have wired LAN, but for $5 I can’t complain!
Some routers have USB ports that support printers. Or, if you know Linux, you could set up a raspberry pi to make the printer available on the network.
Ha jokes on you, I’ll just call HP Painters instead! 😜
They’re a good choice if you want your house bricked.
oh no what are you doing step Brother Laser Printer
Why would you paint a house brick?
Just call Brother painters and they will give your house a powder coat for 1/10th the cost!
I went to Best Buy. They have two options. Shit and more shit.
Don’t sign up for HP Instant Amontillado.
Thank you for calling HP Painters! We would be happy to complete your painting job for the low, low price of $200! That’s the up-front cost, then just a small subscription of $100/month on a 10-year contract.
Thanks again for calling, you can send in your deposit of your first born child to
HP Painting & Blood Extraction Services 666 Hells Way Gary IN 46407I love that they’re located in Gary.
Until you get a call from them saying the can of unused paint has passed it support date and you need to purchase a new one, but we don’t sell those outright any more you need to get a $20/m subscription.
And you have to buy them yellow paint NOT because they ran out, but because it got caked in the hose and clogged it up.
I don’t have a Brother printer. It was not the best purchase I ever made (because I do not own one).
Uncannily relevant, I just had this happen with my Epson printer the other day. Is there any printer you can get these days that doesn’t do this?
Brother BW laser. Can’t require yellow ink if it only uses black toner.
I have a brother BW laser and it’s perfect.
if you just need to print documents and other boring stuff, get a bw laser printer.
my canon mf3010 still works pretty well, even after like 7 years of use.I have an epson with the ink tanks on the outside and haven’t had this problem, but also I’m not american and I’m pretty sure it’s against my country’s consumers law
Brilliant
Okay guys, you literally made me decide and go buy old Brother printer for $20. Didn’t have a printer and didn’t realize good printers can get so cheap on secondary market.
Going home :3
CMYK printing typically uses CMY only for black/grey generation up through a certain point. When I’m profiling my printer at work for transmissive printing, I can set that in the profile at about 50%; anything less than 50% gray is going to be CMY only.
And here’s another fun fact; pure black ink (or toner) doesn’t give you very good blacks. If you use only black when you’re printing the darkest areas, you end up with a very washed out looking blacks. The best blacks are achieved with 400% ink coverage, using 100% of each ink channel.
Text is the only place where you can get away with only using black and still have it look good.
So I’ve come across enough comments to know that Brother is the way I’m supposed to go for document printing if I don’t want to deal with enshittification. What if I want to print photos though? I don’t think Brother covers me in that area.
Everyone says just go to the store. It doesn’t cost too much and it’ll be higher quality than any printer you can buy.
My color laser from Brother prints photos well enough for most of my uses for quick off things. But if want an actually high quality photo, I use Walgreens or the like. My prior inkjets was only in between the laser and the professional qualities anyway.
Epson bulk ink printers are fine, ink is very cheap
I get the joke but depending on the grey they may be using a bit of yellow if they want a warmer grey for example.
Yes, but they would want pigments that are different for each paint brand each brand of paint brand and it wouldn’t just be “yellow paint”
Most rage inducing thing of the day.
So you’d rather the overpriced subscription printer service, where they supply the ink?
They want a printer that doesn’t require yellow ink to print black and white.
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