Inkjet printers create a colossal amount of unnecessary waste, on purpose.

HP trumpted a long time ago that more money was made in ink cartridges not the printer (apparently $8000 a gallon). They thus developed their “freebie” printer market around small plastic boxes of ink meant to be non-refillable; a new steady stream of waste was born, protected by various forms of security (mostly obscurity) with a proprietary cartridge and a security chip.

I suppose you could believe the marketing about new nozzles and special heat, colors, etc. but the bottom line is that the cartridges are small, expensive and apparently designed to run out (dry out from non-use or have an expiration time set on their chip) as quickly as possible.

With all that in mind, in 2009 I wandered into the San Francisco Green Festival. I found the usual farmers, the chemists, the arts and crafts…and then I noticed Silo Ink. A tech company! It seemed too good to be true. They will sell you a kit to replace your inkjet cartridges with a nozzle that is connected to an external ink tank, like a large-format professional printer. Their setup costs a little over $100, which seems like a huge bargain compared to a set of regular inkjet cartridges that last 1/10 as long yet cost at least $60.

In 2008, what started off as a research project became the foundation of our business today. With every statistic collected, the environmental impact of ink cartridges was disheartening. The pace of cataclysmic destruction of Mother Earth was increasing to its highest level ever with affordable ink jet printers hitting the market. At the same time, news of a recession had stymied years of growth and hard working people are now starting to lose their jobs. A “spend less, save more” mentality had been adopted by many, but in one particular area, spending less proved amazingly difficult: printer consumables. In an increasingly paperless world, there remains a steady demand of ink jet printers for many applications. Most everyone knows that inkjet ink is the most expensive liquid in the world and we didn’t see a valid reason for why that is. These two issues quickly became the focal point of our mission at Silo Ink.

This is even better than injecting your own ink (messy, time-consuming) and recycling them at ink stores (time-consuming, expensive) because it also solves the problem of evaporating ink in the cartridges.

I am excited to see that they will be at the Green Festival again this year. I highly recommend you visit them to find out more about disruption of the inkjet printer cartridge supply model — see how innovation can significantly curb harmful and unnecessary waste.

Last year’s elections in Hungary brought the right-wing firmly into office with a “super majority”.

They set off making numerous changes to their laws and then on 20 December 2010 their Parliament decided that they should suppress dissent with fines and punishment for all media, including blogs.

The new law imposes restrictions on all public or privately owned media content, whether broadcast, print or web-based.

The National Media and Communications Authority (NMHH), established by the new legislation, has the authority to punish journalists on the basis of vague concepts such as “public interest”, “common morality”, “public order” and the “infringement of the obligation of balanced reporting”.

Media outlets that breach the law face fines ranging from EUR 35,000 to EUR 730,000, or even closure.

There are also concerns about the independence of the NMHH, whose president is appointed by the Prime Minister for nine years. The procedure to appoint the other members of the NMHH does not ensure plurality.

The right-wing shift of the government in Hungary already was a concern for other EU states but this law quickly became the focus of sharp criticism.

A tense [Hungarian Prime Minister] Orbán, sometimes bullish but often on the defensive, faced a two-hour hostile grilling by MEPs, who warned that Budapest was on a collision course with its European partners unless its media law is brought in line with EU values.

Pre-empting the attacks, Orbán warned: “Don’t mix up criticism of Hungarian internal politics with the Hungarian EU Presidency.” He added: “If you mix up, I’m ready to fight.”

This past Monday the Hungarian government showed signs of compromise. They made amendments to the law, but the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) says the changes are not enough; the law still violates EU regulations.

The law vests unusually broad powers in the politically homogeneous Media Authority and Media Council, enabling them to control content of all media. The legislation regulates broadcast, print and online media content based on identical principles. It leaves key terms undefined. It requires all media to be registered with the Media Authority. It punishes violations with high fines. It fails to guarantee the political independence of public service media.

The OSCE had sent a list of recommendations and guidance for Hungary to follow, which they also published online. Interesting test of the EU ability to bring a right-wing shift back to the center.

The news reminds me that when I traveled through Hungary very soon after the fall of Soviet rule I saw fresh black swastikas spray painted on many bridges and roads. The symbols of fascism became so prevalent, I was told after I left, that in 1993 the government tried to enact a ban.

Is it just me or should this presentation have at least one slide on security considerations?

Actually, I’d like to say that the CanSecWest contest proves again that Stuxnet was not a major engineering effort. But I’ll skip dragging up that controversy again and instead point to the obvious. Researchers have demonstrated that a browser running with superuser rights and no other controls/protections may have a vulnerability.

So make sure you use more controls than just the default browser and OS settings…the usual advice. Yes, it’s still true, software can have a security flaw that takes not much effort for a single engineer to find using fuzzing, debugging and memory analysis. Do not depend on it alone for security.

…it took him about two weeks to find the bug and set out to exploit it.

[…]

Wednesday’s event saw hackers take complete control of a fully patched Sony Vaio and MacBook Air by compromising IE and Safari respectively. Google’s Chrome browser was also up for grabs, but no one stepped forward to try hacking it.

Fully patched, but that’s all.

Wonder if Google is worried about what this says about market share and software adoption. Will they be able to stay above 10%? Recent data suggests IE6 dropped 10% in the past year but is still more common than Chrome.

Attackers used to ignore Apple when it was a small player in the market. Then it rocketed into target territory with several hugely popular products. Google must be frustrated to not have anyone step forward to want to attack them. Even their $20,000 add-on bonus was not enough to gather interest.