HP printer app is installing on PCs whether they have HP printers or not
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Even my HP laser is bearable!
Not looking forward to the $800 or so in toner cartridges it will require when the starter cartridges are exhausted. They will basically double the cost of the printer. But if the quality is there -- and it definitely is -- I'm not one to complain, especially since the $800 is (supposed to be) good for 6000 pages. It should be several years before I have to buy another set.
At a previous job we purchased a 3458a multimeter for some precision measurements. Its use cases are more limited now than in 1989 when it was introduced, but for high precision it's still the standard and the design is practically unchanged. They published a very in depth article on its ADC design at the time.
This sure sounds like a MBA beancounter desease gone cancerous.
But yes that. I have a fair bit of HP test gear lying around dating from 60s to 90s.
And a few RPN calculators!
HP kit was eye-wateringly expensive (and worth it), back then.
It's no coincidence the rise of Huawei coincided with the fall of Nortel.
I recently saw a tech youtuber from my home country review a bootleg iPhone 15 Pro Max, and it was very difficult to tell them apart HW wise unless you really knew what to look for.
Same with bootleg AirPods Pros, they even automatically connect to your genuine iPhone when you flip open their case, and only with a recent iOS update does the iPhone warn you they are not genuine AirPods Pros. Insane.
This video is Russian, but you can discard voice. It's pirate copy of iPhone 14. I couldn't tell the difference, at least from that video. That's really lot of effort gone to copy. Those who did that really deserve a respect.
Yes, same how a lot of fancy non-state-sponsored malware is developed by russian/chinese/iranian hackers. Obviously those skills could be put to much better use for good causes than bootlegging iPhones or writing malware, but that's what happens when you're born in a country with no good honest economic opportunities: crime is much more lucrative as no matter how smart and hard working you are, the local legal jobs and business opportunities are still shit.
Here's an easy giveaway - the bottom bezel isn't symmetrical in width.
Getting uniform bezels requires flexible OLED screens (and a few other oled adjectives I've forgotten), and all this is much harder to engineer and a fair bit more expensive. So far other than Apple, only Samsung and Google Pixels appear to be capable of having uniform bezels.
Sure, but they're not designed to fool those who already owned a recent iPhone, but to fool those that never owned a recent iPhone and are just buying their first iPhone now which so are easily fooled if they only get to play with it for a couple of minutes in a parking lot somewhere, before handing over the cash.
It's how this scam works in developing countries. You buy bootleg iPhones from Alibaba for $150 and sell them for $800 in a parking lot to a clueless dude looking to buy his first iPhone who can't afford the $1400 sticker price because that's way more than his monthly wage.
They are absolute bastards now and a shadow of their former self. But they still sell the 3458A
Arguably there should even be open source printers by now.
Nobody gets to graduate college and become rich by maintaining a solution, so you get people who make products worse to show an increase in profit to justify their salaries and promotions.
I have a black-and-white laser Brother printer from over 15 years ago. Never changed the toner, comes out once every few months for the rare occasion I need to print something. I love it
1) It's hard for any business to keep selling a product at 10% profit margin when you know you can sell it for 200% profit margin with the price increase not affecting sales.
2) In the rare situation that a business would accept low margins 'just to be nice to the customer' - they'll just get bought out. It's hard to not accept 10 years of profit for a business when it's being offered to you.
This is like reason 9.832 not to use windows.
Now Apple, for some reason, never clicked with me.
I've been using Linux since 97 or so though, so I'm pretty comfortable with it. But there are some things Windows is just necessary. Games are a good example, there are some games that just won't work under Proton at all. There is other stuff as well. I took the LSAT last year, and they require software to monitor the computer I use while I take the test, and only Mac or Windows is supported.
For games, I just stopped playing and ask for refund on gog or steam anything that doesnt work on wine. Im not much of a hardcore gamer though. I tolerate some nuisances, e.g. Timberborn wont let you alt tab away ( I tolerated that from XP too I guess).
Proctoring software is nasty, though. I have no windows machines left, so I dont know what I would do. Ask to take the test with them, I think?
My sons school software somehow works better on Linux than on the school PCs with windows, but schools have notoriously old hardware so that might be the issue too.
In the end, it's a free country. Anyone still happy on Apple or Windows, be my guest. But I knew a competent IT colleague that questioned my competence daily because I ran Debian at home (And Vista on the job like everyone over there). My response to him stays: Go away and leave me alone.
90% of commenters didn't read the article. (Yes I hate HP too. Use Brother.)
> It's likely that whatever bug is causing the problem made these PCs believe they had an HP printer connected, and then Windows worked the way it's designed to work and downloaded the HP printer app as a result. The questions are: What caused this bug? (..)