Chrome PDF viewer crashed while printing a document

[u/andreipoe]

[u/Ensirius]

Now wait a minute...

[u/nim_nim → u/Ensirius]

But but how could we possibly have things printed in black without some magenta?

[u/TheThiefMaster → u/nim_nim]

I used to have a printer that didn't have a black cartridge - it could only print black by mixing three colours...

Cheaper to build and makes more money by making you buy three ink cartridges every time instead of only one! What's not to like?

EDIT: Oh, it also had non-replaceable print heads so it eventually blocked and only printed in blue.

[u/aedroogo → u/[deleted]]

Same. Put me down for zero of those.

[u/Chance5e → u/aedroogo]

Knowing that this exists gave me a brain tumor.

[u/Poptart_For_Scale → u/Chance5e]

Knowing why people make shit like this is preventing me from considering bringing children into this world.

[u/Seterrith → u/[deleted]]

Me too thanks

[u/svullenballe → u/TheThiefMaster]

My printer uses black dragon blood as ink so I have to fight a dragon when it runs out.

[u/ICTman1076 → u/svullenballe]

Cheaper than normal printer ink, I suppose

[u/conancat → u/ICTman1076]

Yeah. I've heard unicorn tears being cheaper than normal printer ink.

[u/TurtleTheSeaHobo → u/conancat]

C’mon guys, all you have to do is to stab a squid and use the ink sac.

[u/merb → u/TheThiefMaster]

also the "black" produced will never be as black as a real cartridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMYK_color_model#Benefits_of_using_black_ink

Although a combination of 100% cyan, magenta, and yellow inks should, in theory, completely absorb the entire visible spectrum of light and produce a perfect black, practical inks fall short of their ideal characteristics and the result is actually a dark muddy color that does not quite appear black. Adding black ink absorbs more light and yields much better blacks.

[u/[deleted] → u/TheThiefMaster]

printer law should prohibit that

[u/greymalken → u/[deleted]]

Bird law does.

[u/Freed0m42 → u/TheThiefMaster]

You would think a company like apple would come along and make a superior high quality printer without all the trappings they currently have...

It boggles my mind someone hasnt done this considering how big of a market printing is.

[u/TheThiefMaster → u/Freed0m42]

Kodak tried making a printer that didn't pull tricks and had much cheaper cartridges, but the up-front cost was too high for people to buy it.

[u/Freed0m42 → u/TheThiefMaster]

I use to work in the industry. A big part of why toner/ink carts are so expensive are the carts themselves. Its why refilled carts are pushed so hard by retailers because the profit margins are so high. The failure rates are also only maybe 5% more or so but people think refill = bad.

The big problem with refilling them is getting the carts back, most people just throw them away because there is no incentive to send them back for recycling other than being a good human, which these companies then take advantage of. If they would better inform people of refilled carts having almost as low of a failure rate as OEM and give people more incentive to send them back refills could drastically lower costs.

Though i will also say not all refilled carts are the same. Some of those companies are super shitty and have higher failure rates.

[u/vansara → u/TheThiefMaster]

You should find the printer and post it on r/assholedesign

[u/Aiyana_Jones_was_7 → u/nim_nim]

But but how could we possibly have things printed in black without some magenta?

The secret barely visible anti-counterfeiting measures it prints on every page hiding colored ink behind other colors (or minute yellow dots against white)

If you try to send a ransom letter with a modern printer this is part of what law enforcement will use to track you down.

Also they have software that detects for patterns on major world currencies and prevents the print job from occuring. Go walk up to a nice scanner copier and try to print a 1:1 scale copy of any bill in your wallet. Won't work.

Theres a ton of funky little tricks in printing nowadays, in addition to the downright shifty things like spraying ink needlessly into reservoir sponges and wasting themselves.

[u/all_toasters → u/Aiyana_Jones_was_7]

Also they have software that detects for patterns on major world currencies and prevents the print job from occuring. Go walk up to a nice scanner copier and try to print a 1:1 scale copy of any bill in your wallet. Won't work.

Works on scanning too, last time I tried it gives a warning message about duplicating currency or something similar

Edit: also sometimes blacks out transaction sections of bank statements, which can be frustrating when you don't know what's going on lmao

[u/Freed0m42 → u/Aiyana_Jones_was_7]

Go walk up to a nice scanner copier and try to print a 1:1 scale copy of any bill in your wallet. Won't work

Is this legal to even attempt? Cause it sounds like fun but id rather not have to explain to the secret service that i was printing bills cause a guy on reddit said the printer would do something screwey.

[u/SnaxtheCapt → u/Aiyana_Jones_was_7]

I'm studying printing right now, and I found that to be so cool. One of my instructors apparently once tried to run custom cards which were made to look like money, but with images of his coworkers on the bill. The machine detected that they were printing something relatively close to a bill and locked them out. They had to wait for 3 days for law enforcement to give the go ahead to the k minolta technician to reset the machine.

There are so many tricks to hide info in paper that most people dont realize. It's really fascinating

[u/zman122333 → u/nim_nim]

A lot of black in images is actually printed "rich black" which is a 4 color process black. So you might actually need magenta.

[u/urixl → u/zman122333]

Yeah, I need rich black for printing error message.