The Verge shows how Google search is useless
The Verge shows how Google search is useless
After a full year of not thinking about printers, the best printer is still whatever random Brother laser printer that’s on sale.
The Verge published this spam article about the "best printers of 2024" to demonstrate how terrible Google's search results are. It now appears as the top non-sponsored post if you search "best printer" on Google.
I love a good, informative troll.
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From the article...
Don’t feel compelled to do it; my only ask is that you make this article go viral by sharing it in faux-outrage that the EIC of The Verge has published an article partially generated by AI, because after the buttons I am going to include a bunch of AI-generated copy from Google’s Gemini in order to pad this thing out.
I have to admit, it was an interesting read, not quite like anything I've ever read before, for a review.
I honestly can't tell if this is just some genius way of sliding in some AI generated content into a review and getting it to pass our review, or just an editor-in-chief really frustrated with Google's search algorithm paying attention to manipulation by others, so trying to really get their stuff out there for us to see.
Either way, it's definitely worth the read.
As far as Brother printers go, I own an all-in-one laser that's over a decade old, and it's still going strong. And it actually works with Linux to boot. I do hate though that they do some squirrely stuff to try to get you to buy a new toner cartridge early, but if you mask sensors and such, then an existing toner will work forever.
There are very few printers that don't work with Linux. Linux has drivers to interface with most of them through whatever means you like, right in the kernel.
That's one of the reasons my android phone (Linux kernel, remember) is better at finding and queuing up prints on a network printer than any windows machine I've ever used.
I just hit share on a document, choose print... And then it just works.
There are very few printers that don’t work with Linux.
I was speaking with the all-in-one types, that includes scanners and fax machines.
Most printer companies don't make their drivers work well with Linux (or at the very least used to not), and even Brother was in that same boat early on.
But as of late they're much better, so when you run a Brother installer for the drivers it just installs and works now, where in the past you had to worry about 32 bit versus 64 bit libraries in the OS and how they interact with the brother drivers, etc., etc.
I have an MFC-9340 and have also run into this problem. The drivers available in cups allow me to either print two-sided in b&w, or print single-sided in color (at least for the drivers that work at all with the printer). I finally broke down and installed the binary from Brother to get it working fully, but it's annoying that I can't just use a generic driver with this printer.
they do some squirrely stuff to try to get you to buy a new toner cartridge early
My Brother is newer than yours (the cheapest one I could get that prints on both sides of the paper), and has a setting to toggle how it behaves when toner is low.
The default is to pause printing until you replace the toner - honestly that's not entirely wrong. Having the printer run out of toner half way through an important print job could be a disaster.
The alternative mode is to just show a "low toner" warning badge whenever you print a document. That's what I use, but I also check if it printed properly before closing the document which a lot of people don't do. It looks like this:
As far as I know it's just a simple counter - how many pages have you printed since it was replaced. Obviously that's never going to be particularly accurate.
Having the printer run out of toner half way through an important print job could be a disaster.
What, like the printer would explode or something similar kind of disaster?
Or the kind of where the printout doesn't come out well, and you put a new cartridge in, and then you reprint and it looks fine, type of disaster?
The guy who wrote it is the editor-in-chief.
The guy who wrote it is the editor-in-chief.
Yep. I mentioned that in my comment...
or just an editor-in-chief really frustrated
Could you elaborate on your point?
He’s the one that would be doing the review. It isn’t about trying to “sneak in” AI content
It isn’t about trying to “sneak in” AI content
But he says right in the article that he's including AI content at the bottom of the article, to pad it out.
an article partially generated by AI, because after the buttons I am going to include a bunch of AI-generated copy from Google’s Gemini in order to pad this thing out.
My point is if he's being honest and that's the true reason, or just being sneaky and trying to slip in AI content into a human written article.
Well if he announces it, I'm not sure how it's being sneaky and slipping it in. But either way, what would that achieve?
But either way, what would that achieve?
Us being more acceptive of, and not belligerent to, AI written articles.
Nilay Patel - the editor in chief is anti-AI especially when it comes to article content. He doesn't allow anyone at the company to use generated content except when they are writing an article about AI and even then only to demonstrate a point - e.g. "here's a comparison of two LLMs with the same prompt". It was also his decision to stop AI's from crawling any content on their website.
He used AI to pad the article because that's what real spam articles do. It had nothing to do with acceptance.
He used AI to pad the article because that’s what real spam articles do. It had nothing to do with acceptance.
That was a stated goal, yes, but if that sort of tactic is done again and again, at some point, people will push back less against AI in reviews. Toad in a slow boiling pot sort of thing.
Again, tongue-in-cheek. Don't overanalyze it, no need to defend, I'm just stating that was a possibility in the back of my mind, but not most likely what's really going on.
Relax, everything is fine. It's just conversation.
The thing is that the AI text is atrocious and vapid. It takes up a lot of space and says
"Laser printers are better in every way minus full color than inkjets, but are bigger and more expensive than inkjet printers."
The trick is that AI took 12 paragraphs and using a list incorrectly to do it instead of a sentence. And the editor calls it out for that.
And the editor calls it out for that.
Not disputing that. My point, tongue-in-cheek, was if an editor says "hey I'm going to pad my article with a bad AI written portion", then we lower our guard, and are more acceptive of including AI write ups in reviews.
It’s a gag, I promise. He’s talked about it on their podcast
One of my housemates has a brother printer and I was testing some stuff out on LMDE and noticed it was available to print to. No searching for it or driver to be installed or anything. I don't actually need to print but that's pretty cool.
One of my housemates has a brother printer and I was testing some stuff out on LMDE and noticed it was available to print to. No searching for it or driver to be installed or anything. I don’t actually need to print but that’s pretty cool.
People keep missing that I'm talking about a all-in-one, and not just a simple printer-only.
I never had a problem with the printing part of the all-in-one printer, but the scanning and faxing stuff required the Brother driver support, and that wad not natively supported, or were supposed to be supported but it didn't work well, or at all. There were issues with 32-bit versus 62-bit libraries, etc.
Took years to get to a point where the brother drivers would just install and everything would work right. And not everything ever worked right from native Linux.
The comment I replied to didn't mention you had any issues. I just wanted to mention something I had noticed that I thought was cool. Not trying to get into a debate about it.