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Comment by mmmlinux | Hacker News Reader

In case anyone ever wonders why their printer wont print a black and white document when its out of yellow? This.

One of the many reasons to buy a brother monochrome laser printer. I mean the convenience about not needing yellow, not necessarily extra privacy - that is still uncertain.

> Other methods of identification are not as easily recognizable as yellow dots. For example, a modulation of laser intensity and a variation of shades of grey in texts are feasible. As of 2006, it was unknown whether manufacturers were also using these techniques.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printer_tracking_dots#Comparab...

Is anyone producing HP LaserJet 4 reproductions? It was a ridiculously long time before anyone beat that printer.

The Laserjet 4000 series outperforms them, is just as secure, and is the last line developed before HP quality plummeted under Carly. The problem is the cartridges are out of production and the NOS ones have a rubber toner seal that crumbles when the sealing strip is removed. You do get 10k pages on a base cartridge which blows away modern laser printers.

I recall that for a decade or more there were third parties selling remanufactured LJ4 cartridges. I had someone explain to me we don't throw away the empties because we get a deposit on them.

No such thing with the 4k?

They exist. Quality may be suspect.

Yes, I would be stunned if a major mfg like Brother didn't have their own method of fingerprinting.

I think this rationale is defeated by the existence of monochrome printers.

Anyway, users also report this problem when running out of cyan or magenta. Either rich blacks are enabled or the printer is just a bad product.

No it's because color printers actually do use small amounts of color in the black parts of the image to make it look better. They act the same for all colors not just yellow.

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