HP, along with other printer brands, is infamous for issuing firmware updates that brick already-purchased printers that have tried to use third-party ink. In a new form of frustration, HP is now being accused of issuing a firmware update that broke customers’ laser printers—even though the devices are loaded with HP-brand toner.
The firmware update in question is version 20250209, which HP issued on March 4 for its LaserJet MFP M232-M237 models. Per HP, the update includes “security updates,” a “regulatory requirement update,” “general improvements and bug fixes,” and fixes for IPP Everywhere. Looking back to older updates’ fixes and changes, which the new update includes, doesn’t reveal anything out of the ordinary. The older updates mention things like “fixed print quality to ensure borders are not cropped for certain document types,” and “improved firmware update and cartridge rejection experiences.” But there’s no mention of changes to how the printers use or read toner.
However, users have been reporting sudden problems using HP-brand toner in their M232–M237 series printers since their devices updated to 20250209. Users on HP’s support forum say they see Error Code 11 and the hardware’s toner light flashing when trying to print. Some said they’ve cleaned the contacts and reinstalled their toner but still can't print.
“Insanely frustrating because it's my small business printer and just stopped working out of nowhere[,] and I even replaced the tone[r,] which was a $60 expense,” a forum user wrote on March 8.
When reached for comment, an HP spokesperson said:
We are aware of a firmware issue affecting a limited number of HP LaserJet 200 Series devices and our team is actively working on a solution. For assistance, affected customers can contact our support team at: https://support.hp.com.
HP users have been burned by printer updates before
HP hasn't clarified how widespread the reported problems are. But this isn't the first time that HP broke its customers’ printers with an update. In May 2023, for example, a firmware update caused several HP OfficeJet brand printers to stop printing and show a blue screen for weeks.
With such bad experiences with printer updates and HP’s controversial stance on purposely breaking HP printer functionality when using non-HP ink, some have minimal patience for malfunctioning HP printers. As one forum commenter wrote:
… this is just a bad look for HP all around. We're just the ones that noticed it and know how to post on a forum. Imagine how many 1,000s of other users are being affected by this and just think their printer broke.
Some commenters are already using current exasperation to push HP's customers to move to rival printer-maker Brother.
"I went out and got a similar Brother printer for $144 at Walmart," one of HP’s forum users wrote. "Not ideal - but no more auto firmware updates - plus the new printer has [its] own 250 sheet paper tray and manual sheet feeder[,] which is nice. Just a little bigger than the HP. It's a little slower first page out - but I'm not in any particular hurry."
Brother was recently accused via viral video of updating its laser printers so they wouldn't print or would print worse when using non-Brother toner. But Brother denied this is the case to Ars.
With all the announcements from automakers planning for more gasoline and hybrid cars in their future lineups, you'd think that electric vehicles had stopped selling. While that might be increasingly true for Tesla, everyone else is more than picking up the slack. According to analysts at Rho Motion, global EV sales are up 30 percent this year already. Even here in the US, EV sales were still up 28 percent compared to 2024, despite particularly EV-unfriendly headwinds.
Getting ahead of those unfriendly winds may actually be driving the sales bump in the US, where EV sales only grew by less than 8 percent last year, for contrast. "American drivers bought 30 percent more electric vehicles than they had by this time last year, making use of the final months of IRA tax breaks before the incentives are expected to be pulled later this year," said Charles Lester, Rho Motion data manager.
With the expected loss of government incentives and the prospect of new tariffs that will add tens of thousands of dollars to new car prices, now is probably a good time to buy an EV if you think you're going to want or need one.
Perhaps surprisingly, growth in the much more EV-tolerant European Union was barely higher, at 29 percent for the year to date, helped by a new tax on plug-in hybrid weight in France, Rho Motion says. Both Germany and the UK EV markets have grown by 40 percent this year.
China is speeding past the rest of the world in terms of electrifying its transportation, and unsurprisingly it comes out on top in Rho Motion's data, with 35 percent growth for the year to date compared to 2024. Looking month by month shows an even more impressive 73 percent increase year over year, thanks to where the lunar new year fell in 2024 and 2025.
This week, the company that invented the robot vacuum over 20 years ago announced eight new models that are definitely not the Roombas you’re used to. Not only do they look totally different, but they also work differently, thanks to a new-to-Roomba feature: lidar navigation and mapping.
iRobot has started publishing suction power specs for its robots
The new lineup starts at $299 and goes up to $999. It features the entry-level 105 series of vacuums and vacuum mops with the option of an auto-empty dock, the 205 series with a new onboard dust compactor, and the higher-end 405 and 505 models that bring dual spinning mopping pads to the iRobot family for the first time. The new bots come in black and white and will be available to preorder on March 18th at iRobot.com in the US and select European markets.
According to the company, this is the largest product launch in iRobot history. But that’s not the biggest surprise. iRobot finally adding lidar navigation and room mapping — a technology used by most competitors — is a huge change that should bring faster mapping and more features to Roombas. The company is also launching a new iRobot app that adds a real-time cleaning view aided by lidar and it has started publishing suction power specs for its robots.
All the new models feature 7,000Pa and four suction levels, according to iRobot’s product management lead, Warren Fernandez. While he points out it’s not all about suction power, this is significantly lower than the competition. Roborock’s newest model, the Saros 10, has 22,000Pa (but costs $1,600).
Facing increasing competition from Chinese manufacturers, iRobot has gone back to the drawing board with this new line. Featuring a completely new industrial design, the Roombas have been redesigned from the ground up to accommodate the shift from camera-based vSLAM navigation to lidar.
In an interview with The Verge, Fernandez saidthat iRobot made the change now after evaluating the technology for some time because they believe lidar is finally mature enough and affordable enough to fit into their product roadmap.
The main benefit of lidar is smarter mapping for the lower-priced Roombas, including room-specific cleaning and the ability to create clean zones and keep-out zones in the app. For the higher-end models, it should mean faster mapping and more agile navigation.
Also new is an ultrasonic carpet detection sensor on all Roombas, so the robots can intelligently avoid carpets when mopping. The mopping models now all have three levels of water flow and iRobot’s unique SmartScrub option. Previously, most of these features were reserved for higher-end Roombas, which started at $500.
Most models now have a lidar tower on top, and the auto-empty docks have a whole new look. Overall, the new Roombas look a lot more like models from iRobot’s major competitors: Roborock, Dreame, and Ecovacs.
The fanciest model in the new line is the $999 (€799) Roomba Plus 505 Combo Robot Plus AutoWash Dock (yes, the naming has gotten worse). This is the first Roomba with dual spinning mop pads for scrubbing hard floors. It can also extend its right mop outward to clean along edges and lift its mops 10mm to avoid low-pile carpets. Roborock and Dreame have had variations on these features for a while.
The 505 comes with a new multifunction dock that washes and dries the mop pads, refills the mop tank, and empties the bin. It also adds heated drying, something the Combo 10 Max, iRobot’s top-of-the-line robot vacuum / mop that launched last summer, doesn’t have. Like the 10 Max, the 505 has AI-powered obstacle detection, thanks to an onboard camera, so it should recognize and avoid things like cords, socks, and pet waste.
Fernandez says the 10 Max remains the current flagship model, as it has better cleaning power than the 505, but he declined to give suction specs for it. It uses a different mop — a retractable system that puts the mop on top of the bot to avoid carpets. According to Fernandez, the 505 is the only Roomba among the new models that will support the Matter smart home standard, which the 10 Max also does. All the new models will support existing integrations with Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google Home.
The Roomba Plus 405 Combo Robot Plus AutoWash Dock is a step down in price to $799 (€699). It keeps all the same basic functionality — a combo vacuum and mop with spinning mopping pads and a multifunctional dock — but it differs from the 505 in a few ways. It can’t extend its mops, doesn’t have AI-powered obstacle detection (as there’s no camera), and lacks heated mop drying. It also has iRobot’s standard ClearView Lidar navigation, whereas the 505 has a Pro version, which Fernandez says is more accurate and can see smaller objects.
The budget lineup is also getting a big bump up. The new Roomba 105 and 205 series have the same lidar-based mapping, 7,000Pa suction, virtual keep-out zones, automatic carpet detection and avoidance, and object sensing and avoidance capabilities as the 405, all features unavailable on the entry-level Roomba i5 and Combo Essential line.
Both new models come in a vacuum-only or a combo option that adds a removable flat microfiber mopping pad. The 105 works with an auto-empty dock, but the 205 uses the new dust compactor technology. “It’s kind of like a miniaturized version of a trash compactor,” says Fernandez. He says it can last two months before emptying, compared to 75 days on the auto-empty dock. You don’t need to find space for an auto-empty dock, which means you can stick your robot under a couch or bed, and he added that there isn’t a loud emptying noise or a need to buy bin bags.
Both series are priced the same: $449 for the 105 Vac Robot Plus AutoEmpty Dock; $469 (€449) for the 105 Combo Robot Plus AutoEmpty Dock; $449 for the 205 DustCompactor Vac Robot; and $469 (€449) for the 205 DustCompactor Combo Robot. (This is more expensive than Roomba’s Combo Essential line with auto-empty dock, but those don’t have lidar.) If you’re fine with emptying a bin once a week or so, you can go for the 105 Vac Robot for $299 or the 105 Combo Robot for $319 (€299).
There are some innovations here; the dust compactor will appeal to those who don’t like the extra clutter of those big auto-empty docks. I’ve seen something similar on the Narwal Freo X Ultra and found it to be very good. But overall, this lineup represents iRobot capitulating to the competition.
What people really want is spinning mop pads, lidar towers, and suction specs, so that’s what you’re getting
For years, under founder and CEO Colin Angle, the company stood firm in its belief that its superior cleaning ability and smarter robots were just better. It appears that the new CEO, Gary Cohen, took a look at the competitive landscape and decided that what people really want is spinning mop pads, lidar towers, and suction specs, so that’s what you’re getting. “Last year, we reinvented our iRobot Research and Development Labs, and these robots are the result of our world-class engineers’ and designers’ brilliance,” he said in a press release.
This “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach is clearly designed to save the struggling company. The pricing is competitive, and combined with the Roomba name, it’s a strategy that could work well, assuming the products are as good and as reliable as Roombas have traditionally been.
I’m looking forward to testing the new robots to see how they stack up to the current Roombas, which have long been some of my favorite robot vacuums. But for today, I’m slightly sad to see decades of innovation and enterprise at iRobot get trampled in what looks to be a boring race to the middle.
Donald Trump, the President of the United States, performed what basically amounts to an infomercial at the White House for Tesla, a company controlled by his biggest political donor, a day after its stock crashed.
"The future of podcasting shouldn't be locked behind walled gardens," writes the team at Pocket Casts. To push that point forward, Pocket Casts, owned by the company behind WordPress, Automattic Inc., has made its web player free to everyone.
Previously available only to logged-in Pocket Casts users paying $4 per month, Pocket Casts now offers nearly any public-facing podcast feed for streaming, along with controls like playback speed and playlist queueing. If you create an account, you can also sync your playback progress, manage your queue, bookmark episode moments, and save your subscription list and listening preferences. The free access also applies to its clients for Windows and Mac.
"Podcasting is one of the last open corners of the internet, and we’re here to keep it that way," Pocket Cast's blog post reads. For those not fully tuned into the podcasting market, this and other statements in the post—like sharing "without needing a specific platform's approval" and that "podcasts belong to the people, not corporations"—are largely shots at Spotify, and to a much lesser extent other streaming services, that have sought to wrap podcasting's originally open and RSS-based nature inside proprietary markets and formats.
Pocket Casts also took a bullet point to note that "Discovery should be organic, not algorithm-driven, and that users, not an AI that "promotes what’s best for the platform."
Pocket Casts started as an independent app in 2011, developed by a two-person Australian team named Shifty Jelly. The app was sold in 2018 to a collective of National Public Radio and affiliated entities, including WNYC, WBEZ Chicago, the This American Life show, and NPR itself, with BBC Studios later joining in. After failing to gain traction or make profit, the broadcasters sold Pocket Casts to Automattic in 2021, with original co-founders Russell Ivanovic and Philip Simpson remaining in leadership.
As Nicholas Quah noted at his Hot Pod newsletter at the time, third-party podcast clients were on the decline, boxed out of the public mindshare by the default clients on devices and the content networks themselves. Except Google Podcasts, the search and advertising firm's third go at a client, which shut down in 2024 and lateral-passed its users to YouTube Music.
I've been a Pocket Casts user for about as long as the app has existed, starting on Android and moving to iOS in recent years. At some point I purchased a lifetime license to the web version, which remained in place and which I used when I wanted to share episodes with others, listen to something relevant to work, or listen on a Chromebook. It's a reliable bit of software that gets updates and features, and its dual Android/iOS nature makes it easy to share things across the smartphone platform divide.
Apple also now offers a free web version of its Podcasts app. That obviously syncs to a user's Apple account for playlists and other features, and redirects people on iOS devices to their native Podcasts app.
Fantasy author Terry Brooks has announced that he is "semi-retiring" from writing at the age of 81. His Shannara setting will continue to be explored through new books by Delilah Dawson, with him providing advice, editing and feedback. Brooks noted that his recent writing had become more difficult mentally and physically for him, and he wanted to bow out before his skills degraded further.
Terry Brooks began his career as a lawyer, and started writing as a spare-time hobby. A fan of Tolkien, he began writing his first Shannara novel in 1968 and completed it in 1974. He submitted it for publication, and Judy-Lynn Del Rey at Ballantine Books picked it up. She worked with Brooks on a thorough revision of the novel for over two years, because she had a firm belief it would be a commercial smash if handled right. Towards the end of the editing period, Ballantine gave Del Rey and her husband Lester their own imprint, Del Rey Books, and they selected Brooks' novel to be one of their first titles.
The Sword of Shannara was published in early 1977 and was an immediate smash hit, despite derisive critical reviews for its alleged similarities to Lord of the Rings. Alongside Stephen Donaldson's Lord Foul's Bane, the first book in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the novel was credited for kickstarting the post-Tolkien epic fantasy boom.
Brooks took a while to capitalise on the success. His planned sequel novel did not work out well, and he eventually junked the book to start over with a new title called The Elfstones of Shannara. Finally published in 1982, the book was more warmly critically-received (and is still often cited as his best novel) for taking the series in a different direction. The Wishsong of Shannara concluded the initial Shannara Trilogy in 1985.
Brooks did not immediately plan to over-exploit the series and instead wrote a new series of comedic fantasies called the Magic Kingdom of Landover series, which saw a person from our world inherit ownership of a fantasy kingdom, with resulting hijinks. The first book was titled Magic Kingdom for Sale - SOLD! (1986) and was succeeded by five more books, published irregularly until 2009. The series never matched Shannara's profile.
He returned to the world of Shannara in with the four-volume Heritage of Shannara series (1990-93) and prequel novel First King of Shannara (1996). His apocalyptic urban fantasy series The Word & Void (1997-99) initially appeared unconnected but was later revealed to be a prequel to the Shannara series, revealing how our world becomes the one seen in the books.
After this point he wrote the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara series (2000-2002), the High Druid of Shannara trilogy (2003-05), Genesis of Shannara trilogy (2006-08), Legends of Shannara duology (2010-11), Paladins of Shannara short story trilogy (2012-13), Dark Legacy of Shannara trilogy (2012-13), Defenders of Shannara series (2014-16) and the Fall of Shannara quartet (2017-20).
Galaphile, due for publication tomorrow (!), is the first novel in the First Druids of Shannara series and will now be the last novel written by Brooks alone. Delilah Dawson will complete the series with Brooks' input.
Brooks has also written or co-written several Shannara spin-off books. The series spawned both a 1995 computer game and a TV show that ran for two seasons on MTV in 2016-17.
Brooks has written other works, including the Viridian Deep trilogy (2021-23), Street Freaks (2018), and a writing memoir, Sometimes the Magic Works (2003). He also wrote the novelisations for the films Hook (1991) and Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999).
Delilah Dawson is best-known for her Star Wars work, including the novels Phasma and Black Spire. She also worked on the Rick & Morty, Star Pig and Sparrowhawk comic series. Her original fiction includes the Blud series, Shadow sequence and, alongside Kevin Hearne, the Tales of Pell trilogy.
It's very unusual for an author to end their career gracefully and on their own terms. In a 48-year career, Brooks has published 45 novels in total, 33 of them in the Shannara universe, and sold over 50 million books, making him one of the biggest-selling living epic fantasy authors (possibly the biggest-selling, only behind George R.R. Martin). He was rarely a critical darling, but gained an enthusiastic fanbase by writing energetic, pulp fantasy and by being widely-regarded as one of the nicest guys in the business. Here's to an enjoyable retirement.
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