looks at ink cart, see’s it’s still got 40% of it’s contents in there - “hey bud there’s still ink-”
“FUCK YOU PAY ME.” – HP Innovation
this is how printers meet crowbars and baseball bats.
Damn it feels good to be a gangster.
The reason this happens is to prevent counterfeiting money.
From Snopes:
Do Household Printers Leave an Invisible Tracking Code on All Your Printed Documents?
Mostly true.
What’s True
Numerous brands of color laser printers leave coded metadata in barely perceptible yellow dots that can be used to trace a printed document to its source, a feature originally intended as a deterrent to counterfeiting currency with laser printers.
What’s Undetermined
While a majority of laser printers are designed to produce this secret metadata, it is unclear exactly how many printing companies and models employ the technology.
Sure. That black and white hundred dollar bill I printed surely won’t pass scrutiny with the secret yellow dots.
I didn’t say it made logical sense.
The (US) law was passed: “All colour printers must include identifying metadata on every print”. So the printer manufactures went…sure, ok.
The job of the government, pass dumb laws to prevent imaginary crimes, while the CIA secretly bangs your mum
You can legally copy US currency in black and white because, like you suggested, it’s obviously not real. So if that’s the reason for the micro printing it wouldn’t be applicable on a black only laser printer. The original post is also not relevant to your situation at all anyway…
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In that case you show dominance by removing the other colors one by one until it prints
Nothing beats my old black and white laser printer that accepts 10 dollar third party cartridges! Never dries out and prints thousands of pages on a cartridge.
it needs the cyan to barter for black with the fairies of the ink dimension
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Brother printers can lick my salty nuts for exactly this reason.
It is not brothers fault. It was something they were forced to do.
More generally, I have found Brother to be the least worst printer company.
If you are only printing text, a low end brother laser printer is by far your best option.
If you are printing less than a couple of hundred colour pages a year you are better off going to a print shop to do so as it will be cheaper.
If you are printing more than a couple of hundred colour pages a years look into Epson ecotank printers as they are the most cost effective option.
The printer wouldn’t even scan without ink though.
I’m also not in the USA.
I’m also not in the USA.
Neither am I. Tech hardware laws that pass in the US get applied everywhere and the law may have been passed elsewhere as well. All I know is that pretty much all printers worldwide do this.
Why the scanning thing happens, I have no idea. I had not read the law it may be so broad “Devices that can print are not allowed to function without the ability to print the colour dots” that they must be disabled until they can print colour.
cost effective
cost efficient
cost-effective (adj): If an activity is cost-effective, it is good value for the amount of money paid:
there is no difference of meaning between cost-effective and cost-efficient.
After the last Canon inkjet printer clogged up, just like the last one did, and the one before it, I just got a small Laserjet monochrome to see if I can beat the system.
Iirc even when printing black-and-white and specifically not choosing to print in color, the printer still uses some of the other colors to get a more “true” black. So in order to legit print in just black-and-white, you want a monochrome printer - otherwise, the printer will keep using smaller amounts of other ink for the black colors.
You’re close. True black, like black text, will use black only. But any slightly off shade of black will combine all other colors to make some kind of grey because if you’re using a color printer grey isn’t just “less black”. You can fix this by either setting your color printer to black only or grayscale, or like you said getting a monochromatic laser printer.
Um, what? Black is the darkest color. Technically the absence of all colors. You’re not going to get a darker black by mixing cyan. In fact it will probably get lighter.
That’s not true for ink, just light.
This one never gets old.
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