Answering my own question: changing the default admin password apparently IS a mitigation for the issue that firmware update cannot fix.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fsupport.brother.com%2Fg%2F...

If simply changing the admin password (as I have) is enough mitigation.

Is it possible to generate a magic password that opens admin access regardless?

I think one of the issues is that the printer can become a platform for creating DDOS attacks, outbound from your network: part of a botnet.

Placing it on your local network is protection from somebody accessing it directly from the Internet, but not from automated attacks from other affected devices on your network.

Actually, Brother printers have traditionally been one of the best responses to the razors-and-blades scam.

Yes, they sell toner (for mine), but there's no vendor lock-in that I've been able to find (unlike HP, which I'll never buy).

They're solid, great value plays, for not much money.

What, are you just not going to have a printer?

Well...yeah!

Didn't know about this. Very cool.

Well, maybe over the network: random as a service.

You of course lose provability, but if true randomness became necessary for some future phone app, you could just ask for and receive one.

Yeah, I know, but it's bugged me since they changed it that I have to use [option] to fix what they broke.

[option] is to get UI behaviors that don't work in the expected way.

Well, the expected way was to maximize. So [option] should get you the iPad full screen, because the green button has well-defined, regularly-used expected UI behavior.

Pisses me right off. That and backward vertical scrolling. At least you can fix the latter with a setting, but why should I have to fix my OS?

He'd make a great artillery target.

Feature-itis is the death of usable, useful software, commercially or Open Source.

I don't mean you can't SELL such software (*cough*MS-Office*cough*), but the software sucks.

Apple's success is understanding that one simplifies by removing choice, and this helps _most_ people find the software more usable and useful.

(And no, Apple doesn't walk on water, and yes, they make tons of mistakes and bad choices. No fan-boi here.)

There are a number of constituencies who will _hate_ software simplified this way. One of those is the typical developer, who's an "ultimate customizer" and typically wants all the options available and discrete control over them.

This difference between developers and "most people" is one of the reasons so much software has awful usability: Developers build it for someone like themselves. If there's no one with the professional capacity of evaluating a design's usability, or no corporate will to understand and implement the findings of such an evaluation, the software is gonna suck, for most people.

Yes, there are a few unicorns out there: Developers who know that the typical developer isn't like most people, and can empathize with people who aren't customizers. But they're scarce as...unicorns.

And there are a few use cases out there (IDEs, for example) built for these customizer constituencies, which do well by providing all the options for them. It's often hell getting these expert-focused tools past the usability staff, who, obviously, aren't like developers, and can't see their own blind spot here.

Now maybe I can unload all this Flooz!

They don't need a "right-to-repair" clause. Right to repair needs to be a basic part of the law - a right of any owner of any thing, not just on a one-off contractual basis.

The DMCA and WIPO treaty should be fixed or done away with unless we all can repair what we buy.

As of today, there's no reasonable way to use passkeys on your choice of browser on macOS without enabling iCloud keychain, which I am not going to do.

I can use my Yubikey as 2FA, but not as a passkey without involving Apple's cloud.

Nope.

Another way Passkeys fail.

Now if they can remove iPad-like fullscreen windows from macOS, we'll be getting back to where we belong.

Colorblindness is so relaxing sometimes. About the same color. Not my problem.

Mo'st American's apparently cannot use an apo'strophe worth a s'hit.