Mark Tyson:
Louis Rossmann has shared a new video encapsulating his surprise, and disappointment, that Brother has morphed into an “anti-consumer printer company.” More information about Brother’s embrace of the dark side are shared on Rossmann’s wiki, with the major two issues being new firmware disabling third party toner, and preventing (on color devices) color registration functionality.
Rossmann is clearly perturbed by Brother’s quiet volte-face with regard to aftermarket ink. Above he admits that he used to tell long-suffering HP or Canon printing device owners faces with cartridge DRM issues “Buy a brother laser printer for $100 and all of your woes will be solved.”
Sadly, “Brother is among the rest of them now,” mused the famous RepairTuber.
Scharon Harding (via Slashdot):
The video, spotted by Tom’s Hardware, has 163,000 views as of this writing and seems to be based on a Reddit post from 2022. In that post, Reddit user 20Factorial said that firmware update W1.56 caused the automatic color registration feature to stop working on his Brother MFC-3750 when using third-party cartridges.
“With the colors not able to be aligned, the printer is effectively non-functional,” 20Factorial said. The Redditor went on to say that when asked, a Brother customer service agent confirmed that “the printer is non-functional without genuine toner.”
[…]
Brother denied to Ars Technica that it intentionally bricks printer functionality when users install third-party toner or ink.
[…]
20Factorial isn’t the only one who has claimed to see printer capabilities decline when trying to use a third-party cartridge.
The general consensus seems to be that official Brother cartridges work a little better, but that Brother doesn’t block you from using alternatives.
Previously:
Brother DRM iOS Mac Printing
Filipe Espósito (via Dare Obasanjo):
As reported by Brazilian newspaper Valor Econômico (via O Globo), a federal judge in Brazil ruled on Wednesday that Apple will have to open up the iOS ecosystem to third-party apps in Brazil just like the company did in the EU. The judge considers that the “limitations” imposed by the company on developers could jeopardize the entry of new competitors in the segment.
In November 2024, the Brazilian antitrust regulator “Cade” ruled that Apple can no longer prevent developers from selling content and distributing apps outside the App Store in Brazil. The company would have 20 days to comply with Brazil’s antitrust legislation, otherwise it would be fined more than $40,000 a day.
[…]
Judge Pablo Zuniga has ordered that Apple will have to implement the required changes in Brazil within the next three months. The judge states that, despite Apple’s claims, the company “has already complied with similar obligations in other countries, without demonstrating a significant impact or irreparable damage to its business model.”
Nick Heer:
The rules are changing worldwide. Apple can make this easy for itself, or it can tediously lose its fights one country at a time.
Previously:
Antitrust App Store Brazil iOS iOS 18 Legal Sideloading
Reuters (YouTube):
Digg founder Kevin Rose has teamed up with former rival Alexis Ohanian to buy the once-popular content aggregator as they bet on an artificial intelligence-powered revival of the platform that once drew around 40 million monthly visitors.
Launched in 2004 by a then 27-year-old Rose, Digg was once called the “homepage of the internet” and was a rival to Reddit, opens new tab, a firm co-founded by Ohanian.
Mike Isaac (via Hacker News):
“This is the perfect time to revisit this idea with fresh eyes,” Mr. Rose, 48, now a venture capitalist at True Ventures, said in an interview. He said social media had become so ubiquitous that “it doesn’t need to be winner take all,” adding that “we don’t need to take down Reddit to win.”
Ben Lovejoy:
It’s an interesting move given that Reddit was a competitor who pretty much inherited that “homepage of the web” accolade. Also ‘interesting’ is the pair’s belief that most moderation can be done by AI …
[…]
The site was essentially killed by a combination of an unpopular update, widespread manipulation, and the growing popularity of Facebook – whose Like and Share buttons proved more popular. In 2012, the company was broken up and sold for parts.
Nick Heer:
Before it was acquired by Money Group, a publisher and advertising company, Digg was previously owned by BuySellAds. No word on how many people were working on the most recent version and whether any of them will continue.
Previously:
Acquisition Artificial Intelligence Business Digg Web
Carly Page:
Security researchers are warning that data exposed to the internet, even for a moment, can linger in online generative AI chatbots like Microsoft Copilot long after the data is made private.
[…]
Lasso co-founder Ophir Dror told TechCrunch that the company found content from its own GitHub repository appearing in Copilot because it had been indexed and cached by Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Dror said the repository, which had been mistakenly made public for a brief period, had since been set to private, and accessing it on GitHub returned a “page not found” error.
[…]
Lasso extracted a list of repositories that were public at any point in 2024 and identified the repositories that had since been deleted or set to private. Using Bing’s caching mechanism, the company found more than 20,000 since-private GitHub repositories still had data accessible through Copilot, affecting more than 16,000 organizations.
Any passwords or keys that were ever made public, however briefly, should be revoked. However, there may be other information of interest that’s now stored, and it was not obvious to me that it would be accessible via Copilot when it doesn’t show up in Bing.
Previously:
Artificial Intelligence Bing Copilot AI GitHub Privacy Security Web
