@dangoodin you could, I suppose, embed a microcontroller into the cartridge to emulate an EEPROM with much larger storage capacity, but that's a *lot* of manual work, and is nontrivial due to the CoB wire bonding (a wire bonding tool costs ten grand plus!)
literally nobody in the third party ink space is going to do this. nation states doing targeted attacks *might* bother, maybe, but there are usually much cheaper and easier vectors than these wacky theorised ink supply chain attacks.
@dangoodin so yeah, I call bullshit on this guy's claim. he has profit motive and I think he's a liar.
I've seen and done some truly wacky hardware stuff in my life, including hiding data in SPD EEPROMs on memory DIMMs (and replacing them with microcontrollers for similar shenanigans), so believe me when I say that his claim is wildly implausible even in a lab setting, let alone in the wild, and let alone at any scale that impacts businesses or individuals rather than selected political actors.
@dangoodin I should also point out that the EEPROMs they embed in the plastic for DRM purposes are a large part of why almost all printer ink cartridges end up in landfill rather than plastic recycling.
they also know that "eco" models of printers that use refillable liquid ink hoppers rather than cartridges don't allow them to artificially lock consumers into their ecosystem, because you can buy the ink from whoever you like, so it benefits them greatly to spread FUD about third parties.
@dangoodin the ink in each standard cartridge costs less than a penny to make. the plastic costs a few pennies. so you can imagine why they're so enamoured with keeping customers buying stuff from their consumables ecosystem at premium prices. the profit margins are ridiculous. that's also why in the mid-to-late 2000s there was such a race to the bottom on printer prices, offering them for £30 or even less. they sold them as loss leaders knowing that the median lifetime ink purchase made profit.
@gsuberland I know of one particular brand of "eco" printer that, while you can use any ink in it, DRM-locks itself after every 10th or so refill, requiring an expensive technician's visit to replace a waste ink sponge and reset the DRM.
@jaseg oh the fucking SPONGES
I forgot about them
@gsuberland @dangoodin Good info. Thanks. I decided long ago never to buy another HP product when I learned that my multi-function printer (Office jet Pro 8600 plus) wouldn't scan a page unless it had a full complement of ink cartridges. Interested to know what you use for printing.
@samueljohnson @dangoodin the cheapest laser printer I could find
