HP fails to derail claims that it bricks scanners on multifunction printers when ink runs low::HP Inc. has failed to shunt aside claims in a lawsuit that it disables scanners and other functions on its multifunction printers whenever the ink runs low

  • hoot@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Do people not know what “bricking” means? This article is about HP disabling features if the printer runs out of ink.

    If they bricked it, it would be unrecoverably broken, never to function again.

    • mwguy@infosec.pub
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      1 year ago

      A more accurate term would be that they ransom the functionality of the product they sold until you pay the ransom.

    • ozymandias117@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      “Bricking,” “hard bricking,” and “soft bricking” became inexorably intertwined during the early days of flashing custom Android ROMs

      • Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        HTC Dream and G2 user/modder here

        I’m not familiar with that. Brick means “your item is now a brick.”

        I’ve never heard of hard or soft.

        • bitwolf@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          Soft brick afaik is like when you mess up fastboot and need to use Qualcomms tool to repartition and repair fastboot.

          Generally you cannot do this, but the tool leaked for some devices, this it’s softbricked

          • ozymandias117@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            QC uses the firehose protocol to load software that early, but that’s a good overview

            The tools are generally available to flash, but manufacturers may not offer the next signed bootloader as something you can easily download (that one then implements fastboot)

            You also need some mechanism to force the PBL to jump to download mode instead of trying to load the next bootloader

        • ozymandias117@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          At that time, “Hard Brick” was getting used for the hardware was damaged

          “Soft brick” was something like a boot loop where the device was unusable, but something like a DFU flash could repair (using DFU since every manufacturer had their own boot flash implementation back then)

          At some point after that, people just went back to saying “bricked” for both

          • Misconduct@startrek.website
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            1 year ago

            As someone that rooted their phones a lot back in the day it’s wild how vividly I remember this and it went down exactly as you described lol

    • 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      A bit like most Inkjets when the unreplaceable waste ink pad dries up 😭

      Sit through a whole turn on sequence, just for the screen to say the manufacturer’s equivalent of “Bin me, I’m dead” with the only option being to power off