HP is not bricking the printers. The printers will continue to work if you put the HP cartridges back in.
I'm not condoning HP at all, not in a million years.
But the verb "disable" carries connotations of permanence, so it seems like a disingenuous word choice at best, if it's not outright clickbait. Just so people aren't confused here.
There's no HP cartridge to put back in, unless I go and buy one.
The printer is disabled until I give HP money. I call that extortion.
At least they should be required to compensate the users.
If that meaning was intended, the headline should read "HP disables the use of third-party ink cartridges on their customers' printers with a firmware update", or something like that.
I agree with OP that as written the headline is misleading.
No it doesn't. I can disable the safety catch or disable the alarm just fine without breaking them.
That's semi-bricking the printers.
> I'm not condoning HP at all, not in a million years.
You're semi-condoning them.
I suppose you could say that, but it would mean something quite different from what bricking normally does. And I wouldn't advise it because it sounds like a soft brick rather than "beep boop replace cartridge".
> You're semi-condoning them.
No they're not.
It's this mentality that makes internet discussions so polarized. If you allow the slightest nuance or point out that something is factually incorrect, and it happens to go against the prevailing narrative, you're accused of being a shill.