Epson customers report Google Cloud Print causing printers to power down
productforums.google.com
productforums.google.com
From the story: "We are working with Epson and internal Google teams to root cause this issue"
I've seen many help forum threads go unanswered, after days and pages of postings.
2) Make an end-run around the Google support wall-of-silence. As another commenter here mentions, sometimes posts/comments on HN gain attention. Apparently not as much as they used to. But, a month or two after I finally complained in an HN comment about months-long problem with very frequent Nexus 5x camera app crashes on zoom-out, the problem finally, silently went away.
P.S. Yes, I'd used the in-app/Android problem reporting prompt/feature... countless times, including my own optional comment as to exactly what was happening. I eventually gave up on repeatedly taking that extra time and just started canceling out of it, as the error reports seemed to just be disappearing into a black hole of silence and inaction.
They are no doubt the best printers in your company's facility. Most printers for enterprises are garbage now without a service contract or managed print deal.
For personal use, the brother laser devices <$100. Are the best bet. Simple, reliable and most of the things that break are either field replaceable or you can ditch the device.
Rarely do I fanboy over a piece of electronic device, but this rings so incredibly true. I get thousands of pages out of my Brother laser printer per toner cartridge, it duplexes, the wireless just works. If you absolutely need a printer, get the sub-$100 brother laser printer.
https://www.amazon.com/Brother-HL-L2340DW-Monochrome-Wireles...
It's great... works with AirPrint, Google CloudPrint and standard printer protocols. I think you can even FTP jobs to it.
It's mostly a social problem, maybe it's useless since the printing industry is a remain of the xerox administrative era. The amount of prints is very low nowadays.
I'm sure there a nice void for a more humane printer kit, cheaper ink, acceptable open drivers, and more creative usage.
Industrial/commercial printers qualify at least for the "cheaper ink" part, and you can actually buy individual parts like printheads, complete with documentation; however, they cost at least an order of magnitude more and tend to have much lower resolutions.
I don't think there's a market for a more open printer, not at the price you'd have to charge for your small production runs.
What does that mean?
ps: also, and it's a bit off topic, slightly; you said non genericity is how they make profit, maybe (just a thought) it's not the only way. People seems frustrated and disenchanted by printers; it's a cool device if you allow user to take control and not obscure everything in the alleged purpose it's to make it easier. Potential new applications, usages; better ergonomics and repairability, longer lasting things, that's something people would pay for. The trend is around cool device + quick renewal but high freqs are harmful IMO companies should invert this business model.
I use it very infrequently, admittedly.
I have though about buying a scanner and a color laser and wiring up a copier through the pi (scan then print at the push of a button) --- but finding a stand alone scanner that will do 11 by 17 has been a chalenge
There is an interesting discussion on that exact model here:
http://superuser.com/questions/758561/when-does-a-laser-prin...
I wish I would have known about these problems before, then I might have bought a printer with more ram.
Moving parts are inherently unreliable. We've just got really used to the incredible reliability that you get from solid state electronics.
My point is that you may well be right. Fusion power is an easier challenge than mechanical things not breaking because you can do it without moving parts (give or take a turbine).
While I generally agree, the point is, even when there are no moving parts, there's a lot of failure points (temperature, vibrations) and manufacturers will create faulty devices, no matter what. If device is too good, they will cut expenses, until it'll be "good enough".
That said, environmentals are important. Hot solid state electronics fail.
For some reason we take more care when building mechanical devices, because we can observe and measure the complexities and wear and tear of use.
Software on the other hand, with firmware being a variant of software, can apparently neither be properly observed nor tested.
Do you realize that you're making this comment on a thread about a global problem that involves no moving parts at all?
I was actually thinking it was going to be time to buy a new printer as my WF 645 is very old. I thought the WiFi adapter had gone bad and was causing the boot loop. Apparently this is not the case.
To fix it I started it up and immediately disabled the Wi-Fi. Then I "suspended" Google Cloud Print and Epson Connect Services. It's working fine now - albeit with no cloud services for our phones/tablets.
Hopefully they resolve this soon.
https://developers.google.com/cloud-print/docs/devguide
...and the protocol involves HTTPS, OAuth, JSON, and XMPP(!), so rather more complex than existing protocols like IPP; although much can be said for having simple-to-parse protocols especially for embedded devices like these, some error occurring in the GCP part of the firmware shouldn't cause the whole printer to become unusable.
- IPP requires unique drivers for each printer. Some mobile devices (Chromebooks and iOS, I believe) don't allow installing drivers.
- IPP requires that you're on the same LAN segment, or that you punch a hole through your router. That doesn't work very well when interacting with foreign printers, and punching a hole through a router is too complex for many home users.
- IPP is limited to HTTP Basic/Digest auth, which isn't user friendly or secure. The traffic's also unencrypted. (And SSH isn't user friendly enough for home users.)
(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but not on Cloud Print.)
""" Using Google Cloud Print, you can make your home and work printers available to you and anyone you choose, from the applications you use every day. Google Cloud Print works on your phone, tablet, Chromebook, PC, and any other web-connected device you want to print from. """
Ok, so my printer is supposed to be registered to google cloud to make me print from anywhere. Ok. But my files?
https://www.google.com/cloudprint/learn/howitworks.html
""" When you print through Google Cloud Print, your file is securely sent to your printer over the web. Because it’s the web, Google Cloud Print works whether you’re in the same room as your printer, or on another continent. It also doesn’t matter whether you’re on a phone, a traditional desktop, or anything in between (like a tablet). """
So if I'm in my room, on my laptop, at 3 meters from my ubersupercloudenabled printer, I can send my file to it via the web. Securely. Ok.
""" Documents are transferred over a secure HTTPS web connection. After a job is completed, the associated document is deleted from our servers. """
The file is sent via HTTPS. But the file itself...is it encrypted? (Maybe the printer generates a keypair upon registration, and the same does every devices, etc etc...?)
https://support.google.com/cloudprint/answer/2541843?hl=en&r...
""" Who can see what I’m printing?
Google Cloud Print jobs are submitted and retrieved over a secure connection (https), and are only available to you and the printer you’re using. """
""" Any document you send for printing is kept strictly confidential. Google does not access the documents you print for any purpose other than to improve printing. """
"to improve printing" may be the "metaphor" behind the functioning of Google Cloud Print itself. This can be read, after removing the double negations and the other usual tricks as "Google access the documents you print to give to you the comfort to print your files while staying 3 meters away from your printer, by passing them to the cloud and our automatic eyes and godknowswhat".
NO. THANKS BUT NO.
Conversely, if you are NOT within a few meters of your printer, resetting the machine, managing paper jams, cartridge or toner replacement (i.e. solve the issues that invariably happen every single time you really need to print something, particularly if you are in a hurry) is tricky.
I can do the same using a wifi/eth enabled printer and my router plus maybe using a firewall to block the printer to go out on the internet and to be called from outside.
Gmail? I can do the same thing with a VPS, qmail, dspam, courier, and roundcube. Why does gmail even exist?
Congratulations - you're very smart. But you're not the target market.
For a student printing schoolwork, printing my concert tickets from a tablet or a hundred other use cases, yore fine.
I don't care which type of file I print, I simply want to print them privately. As it it's already possible without GCP, I don't catch why people use it.
Another use case are people who are living in a Google Docs world. It's easy to print "natively" out of that environment and not be aware of where you are from a network POV.
I agree with your POV btw, just pointing out where many people come from when they use this solution.
Maybe google noticed a botnet of EPSON printer trying to knock them down. Or a poorly setup of uPnP/network that helps penetrate (THEIR) networks...
Maybe they just shut down the printers because nothing else can be done to suppress the threat.
Maybe they don't publicized it because :
1) this is called illegal penetration of someone else system (hacking...) and is a penal offense in many countries
2) it would give IoT a bad name (Google's kind of prospective beneficial market)
3) it would be illegal for them/very costly to give the information (libel, NDA...)
4) there is NO solutions...
This is pure speculation, because since I don't think google throw their printer in the trash, no one can go to their office and check if they are actually throwing away some EPSON printers.