No they didn't. I'm not defending HP at all, but let's stick to facts.

HP didn't brick any machines because of ink choice. They prevented them from working with off-brand ink, but the printers worked properly again once HP ink was inserted. "Bricking" is permanent, but the ink thing wasn't. "Bricking" was a disappointingly widespread misconception in the thread from 7 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35931468

Again, I'm not condoning the ink thing at all, but "bricking" is not what was happening. HP is already bad enough, we don't need to spread false information on top of it.